Painful

Rating: Null/10 (10 February 1999)

I hated this film for so many reasons I do not really know where to begin. I am sick reading reviews that claim Roberto Benigni as the new Chaplin. Chaplin this man is not. Slapstick is a bit like ballet, it is either really good or painfully bad, and this movie was painfully bad. I am not a snob when it comes to humor but some of the scenes were so ridiculously mediocre and rigid that it took me all my patience not to vomit (as a previous reviewer claimed to accomplish after watching Schindlers list).
Furthermore, I am sick of people saying..."well it was just the portrayal of the Holocaust as a child would have seen it". What nonsense. Why would a child see the horrors and mindless brutality of a concentration camp any differently than an adult? The reality was that women and children were immediately separated from the men and often marched straight to the gas chamber. To suggest that someone could just hide a child under their bed for the duration of the war is ludicrous. The character Guido was able to strut around the camp like he was on some kind of a vacation, mocking his German guards as you would an incompetent schoolteacher. The German guards were portrayed as the proverbial straight guys and the butt of a joke that I could never fathom.
Maybe I am missing something here but anyone who left this film with a warm fuzzy feeling is profoundly ignorant. I do not agree with the many reviews that say "if you want the real story watch Shindlers list" or "this is a fine example of the spirit of man in the face of adversity". This is an example of nothing more than a poorly constructed comic farce that uses the Holocaust as a backdrop. The Holocaust was about the brutal mass subjugation and extermination of six million people. It should never be portrayed as anything less, and in this film it was. The Holocaust should never be used as a comic platform for a father and son bonding farce.