Much ado about...

Rating: Null/10 (12 May 1999)

This film turned out to be quite controversial, at least in my country, because of its references to the Holocaust. As for the movie itself, I don´t think it ranks as a masterpiece, as I have seen written all over the media. For starters, Benigni is a great comedy actor, but he isn´t much of a director. The final cut of the movie seems to be made by an amateur. Some scenes have no connection with the plot of the movie, not to mention some fragments of the story that are hard to believe, even in a fiction environment. And, to be perfectly honest, the ending is pathetic... that cliche might have won Benigni some Oscars, but is very antipathic to non-American viewers. To sum up, much ado about nothing, that´s my opinion. The film is good and the idea is actually excellent (perhaps with a better director...), but it isn´t a masterpiece; far from that, it´s a face in the crowd of last year´s film making, with such great titles as "The Thin Red Line".