Verdone is Father Carlo, an Italian missionary in Africa, suffering a personal crisis and deciding to go back home for a while.
Home is Roma, where is father and two siblings live. Being a cynical city, inhabited by sarcastic, unpleasant people, the poor Carlo is thrown even deeper into a pit of doubts. The trouble is, none of his emotional issues ring true.
Moreover, all his family members are petty and unpleasant.
Carlo's father remarried Olga, a much younger Easter European woman and doesn't get along with his children. Besides, the old guy is selfish and follows his sexual drive rather than trying to be fair to his family, Carlo's brother is a cocaine addict and his sister is a self-involved psychiatrist, with a silly teenage daughter.
To complicate matters, Olga has her own daughter, the pretty - and slutty - Lara who quickly steals the show.
With her entrance, any attempt to deal with Carlo's emotional issues fly down the drain and the tone shifts from social satire to geriatric infatuation, with plenty of scenes with the scantily clad young actress in mildly provocative scenes.
The ending is tacked in roughly and incongruously, with a vague message of a dysfunctional family being better than nothing.
Home is Roma, where is father and two siblings live. Being a cynical city, inhabited by sarcastic, unpleasant people, the poor Carlo is thrown even deeper into a pit of doubts. The trouble is, none of his emotional issues ring true.
Moreover, all his family members are petty and unpleasant.
Carlo's father remarried Olga, a much younger Easter European woman and doesn't get along with his children. Besides, the old guy is selfish and follows his sexual drive rather than trying to be fair to his family, Carlo's brother is a cocaine addict and his sister is a self-involved psychiatrist, with a silly teenage daughter.
To complicate matters, Olga has her own daughter, the pretty - and slutty - Lara who quickly steals the show.
With her entrance, any attempt to deal with Carlo's emotional issues fly down the drain and the tone shifts from social satire to geriatric infatuation, with plenty of scenes with the scantily clad young actress in mildly provocative scenes.
The ending is tacked in roughly and incongruously, with a vague message of a dysfunctional family being better than nothing.