What a disappointment...

Rating: Null/10 (3 February 1999)

Evidently this movie has received its rave reviews under the "if it's from another country, it must be good" umbrella. To drain all but the slightest amount of discomfort from the nightmare that was the Holocaust in order to use it as a setting for uninspired and unoriginal slapstick is almost offensive. Had this been an American movie with Jim Carrey or Jerry Lewis, the outcry would have been severe. Yet accolades are being showered on an otherwise empty film, which neither evokes bittersweet irony in the face of unspeakable horror (which would have made fore a more appropriate and compelling film) nor childlike whimsy (as some have suggested the film represents). Perhaps the greatest testament to Benigni's brilliance as a filmmaker is that I left the theatre merely bored and not appalled.