Funny and Moving!

Rating: 9/10 (17 March 2010)

"Life Is Beautiful" is not a holocaust movie, although it has some striking scenes that show the precariousness of the camps, it's a movie about how far a person would go to save his own son.
The first half of the movie looks like it's made by Chaplin, it's incredibly funny, and shows how brainy the main character is (Watching his plans to "surprisingly" meet Dora are priceless). And it's also a love story, and not a bad one. It's hard to find directors that are competent in doing comedy and drama very well, usually they make a good drama, but not so good comedy, or the contrary, but Benigni deserves to be compared to Chaplin in this one, he made me laugh and cry, and there was almost no break between these two emotions.
The second half is more about the father/son relationship. What that man went through to protect his son is one of the most beautiful stories i've ever seeing. But all those sad moments merged between funny ones. Benigni's performance is amazingly funny and moving, but what really surprised me about the acting was Giorgio Cantarini as Giosué, I'm not saying he was better than Benigni, but for a kid to make such a big difference in the cast of a movie is rare to see.
Verdict: Funny and moving, this is a masterpiece as good , if not better, than Chaplin's "The Great Dictator".