Missing the point

Rating: 1/10 (28 November 2002)

This was a confusingly awful film. At first it seems like a rip-off of "An American in Paris"; the main character falls in love with a girl that's going to get married, and she ends up with him. There's a bit of clever romance during all this, but it's disturbing how quickly it shifts topic, while remaining very light. Lots of people seem to think it uses comedy and courage to tell a story. I think it's irreverently mindless, and skims off the popularity of one actor and the tragedy of war. I saw a clown, although energetic and somewhat talented, lying to his son who is to dumb to recognize the truth. He calls his act a sacrifice; it's really just a showcase of physical comedy leading to an emotional void. This film borders on propaganda, making light of the reality in concentration camps. Most of it just doesn't make sense, in that with everything that the characters did and went through, they would have suffered much more and probably would have been killed several times throughout the film. Knowing what they did, no one could be that emotionless or stupid. Comedy and the holocaust are not good partners and Benigni just didn't pull it off with this. Guido's game with his son came just too easily; it makes you wonder why if WWII was this nice everyone didn't come out as sugary sweet as this. I'm sure that Benigni is very good as a clown and will be other movies as one, but this wasn't as good as it should be. It won awards for the wrong reasons.