Alright, but the first half is just plain irritating...

Rating: Null/10 (24 August 2000)

I don't seem to be nearly as enthusiastic about this film as the other reviewers on this site. To be sure, I loved the concentration camp part (never thought I'd hear myself say that...), but I really wasn't too impressed with everything leading up to it - which, unfortunately, was rather a lot. Roberto Benigni's ha-ha-look-at-me-being-funny antics of the first half are so saccharine, so slapstick-like that they really are quite irritating at times. It would have been OK if this part of the film (the introduction, so to speak) had lasted ten minutes or so, but unfortunately it lasts much longer than that, and it really becomes rather tiresome in the end. Thank God the concentration camp scenes for which the film is famous DO make up for the first-half irritation...
Seven out of ten, I'd say - begrudgingly.