Reviews

I have an overall reasonably good opinion about this movie. It is not exactly the best work of Carlo Verdone, nor for Renato Pozzetto. Verdone is actually one of my favorite Italian actors/directors and as for Pozzetto, I don't know exactly why, but he makes me laugh in every movie, that can be because of his somehow "different" kind of comicity, so distant from the Italian standard of comic characters. I said, it is not their masterpiece, and there are some section you will feel nearly bored, but other scenes are simply irresistible, you will laugh, and laugh, and also you will discover, as it happened to me yesterday, looking at this movie after a long time, that some of the mots and quotes where strong in your mind but simply you did not remember they were from this specific movie. If you never watched at it then it's worth a try.

The Fantozzi saga in Italy is something you can not do without. A lot of quotes are common use in everyday life of people. Paolo Villaggio, who is the author of the original books of Fantozzi, is also the perfect cast for the part, but also all the other characters are outstanding representations of the real life working environment (I personally enjoy very much "Geometra Calboni" interpreted by Giuseppe Anatrelli).

I happened to think, and more then once, that these movies are not to be lost, they are a portrait of Italian life in the 70s and they are an example on how you can laugh (and laugh loud!) with a very low level (especially in the first and second episodes) of vulgarity. I'll take for me VHS or DVD collection to show them to my children's, with the hope that their generation will enjoy them as much as mine.

Let's start saying I'm a catholic, but I read the book and found it well written and very enjoyable, that means no religious prejudice is forcing this comment into an hypercritic direction.

It is a quite obvious comment that "the movie is less valuable then the book", but in this specific situation it is the only thing you can say when getting out from theater. You get an unpleasant impression that nearly everything is wrong or, at least, is non at the book level, starting from the cast (consider Tom Hanks is normally good and I personally like him, but he is wrong choice for Langdon and he also gives an under his level performance) and going on with some dialogues (you will find quotes from the book that are not really needed and then some needed quote that is missing).

In the end, I must say it is not a completely bad movie and a couple of my friends found it pretty good, but it gets bad if you think what kind of raw materials and worldwide expectations they had in hand to forge it. I give them all a 6 just because I'm sure the book was great (as a novel, not as an historical text) but I also have to admit that it was not simple for sure to be translated on the big screen, especially if your audience, having read the book, is already aware of all the main revelations in the plot.

First of all, and just to put all cards on the table, this movie is nothing exceptional, nor an outstanding masterpiece... it is simply a nice movie on a lot of classic problems teenagers are facing when passing from adolescence to adult age. And if you are getting close (or just entered) your thirties you will absolutely enjoy a lot of reference to the late 80s music and way of life because one of the best ideas they had when writing the screenplay has been to move the story back of about 25 years. And notice the performance of Giorgio Faletti as the high-school teacher, he is a nearly perfect mix of comic and tragedy. Definitively worth a view!