Life is Beautiful Review

by "Steve Rhodes" (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)
October 25th, 1998

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2

Little Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini), around 4 years old, is locked up in a Nazi concentration camp, but he doesn't mind. It's a fun place to be, what with the contests and all. If he and his father, Guido (Roberto Benigni), can amass enough points for proper behavior, they can win the grand prize -- their very own armored tank.

Welcome to the wild and wacky world of writer, director and actor Roberto Benigni as he takes a comic's eye view of the Holocaust in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (LA VITA E BELLA).

(This is the second time in two days that I've screened motion pictures with a Holocaust theme. Yesterday's screening had Stephen King using it as the subject for a horror picture in APT PUPIL. And today's LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL takes a humorous view of the same topic. Personally, I much prefer the serious treatment it got in THE LONG WAY HOME that I saw a couple of weeks ago.)

Regardless of how it sounds, Roberto Benigni, one of Italy's favorite funnymen, treats the biggest tragedy of this century with respect. The film, thank goodness, moves away from its slapstick first hour to a poignant second that is its salvation.

Starting just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the movie shows Fascist Italy in its most handsome light. The sets are sumptuous, the gowns are elegant and the cinematography stunning. The jokes, however, are such old-fashioned slapstick that they are almost never funny. Eggs accidentally breaking on unsuspecting heads and dresses inadvertently ripped by clumsy feet are such old sight gags that it is hard for them to even generate smiles, much less laughs.

The good-spirited film tries hard, perhaps too hard, to charm its audience. It works so hard at being cute that it forgets to be funny.
Eventually the zany style of the first part gives way to the serious second part when Guido, his wife Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), and their son Giosue are send to a Nazi concentration camp. It is there that Guido hides his son and invents the prize cover-up to mask the hopelessness of their situation. Even in the camp, Guido still hams it up to keep up his son's spirits.

The movie's relentlessly happy music will put you in such a pleasant mood that the scenes of the "shower" changing rooms may seem almost harmless. And the Nazis appear a lot nicer than they usually do. Rather than burning Jewish shops, they paint one of their horses a bright lime green and put the words "Achtung Jewish Horse" on it.

Fans of the Roberto Benigni brand of physical humor will undoubtedly love LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Others may want more.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL runs 2:02. The film is in Italian with English subtitles. It is rated PG-13 for holocaust-related thematic elements and would be fine for kids around 12 and up.

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