The most overrated film of the decade.

Rating: 3/10 (2 January 1999)

Which is itself an exaggeration, of course. But I cannot possibly imagine how rabbis and survivors of the Holocaust can recommend this movie to anyone. The first half of the film is so achingly unfunny I turned the tape off. Eventually I tried it again, and discovered that the second half turns into a completely different movie. Auschwitz is portrayed as a particularly grubby holiday camp where no one is beaten, the guards never shoot Benigni as he runs around looking for his little boy; people go to the infirmary and come back; and no one starves. I'd say this film plays into the hands of the revisionists who claim that the Holocaust never happened. The Nazis are indeed 'the mean people who yell a lot' since that's mostly all they do. Run Chaplin's THE GREAT DICTATOR to see a truly brilliant film about life in a Fascist state, and then run SCHINDLER'S LIST to find the best fictional portrayal of the Holocaust. They work together about as well as the two halves of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL do. This is a real disservice to the memory of the people who died in the camps. Roberto Benigni is also one of the least funny people I have seen in film in a very long time.