Robin Williams Where Are You?

Rating: 2/10 (16 May 2008)

This is really two movies: the first an awful slapstick comedy, the second an insulting fantasy.
In the first half we are treated to Roberto Begnini (whatever) doing a really bad Italian Robin Williams impression. Boring us with poor comic timing, annoying screen presence, and thoroughly obnoxious rapid-fire dialog that just grates on one's nerves. His clown-like appearance only emphasizing how unfunny he really is. At this point I was ready to turn it off. But lo and behold, the movie then totally shifts into some sort of Italian Hogan's Heros (not to be confused with Stalag 17).
We are treated to the mystifying insistence of the wife, apparently a non-Jew, demanding going to the concentration camp where her husband and son are being taken. Guido, the main character, mugs and clowns unmolested all around the camp, which is oddly squeaky clean. He manages to caper about, while semi-hiding his small son, and only has to carry an endless supply of obviously fake anvils from point A to point B.
This is not a concentration camp, not a work camp, it's more a summer camp. Everyone plays hard, but stays clean and reasonably well fed. This is a bad movie. Because its funny parts are not funny, its gritty parts are not gritty, and it demands no emotional connection to its poorly acted characters.
Oscar? Puleeze!!!