Well Deserved Praise

Pretty Good

From my favorite movies..

Excellent but underrated film

While I loved Roberto Begnini in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and JOHNNY STECCHINO, I really had a hard time enjoying this film--though fortunately it got better as the film progressed. My biggest problem with it is that I felt that Begnini's character was really creepy. While the film is supposed to be a comedy of sorts, it wasn't all that funny and he came off as a very needy stalker. Last I checked, being a stalker was anathema to good comedy! It seems that every night Begnini dreams about marrying a lady and when he finally sees this woman (Nicoletta Braschi) in real life, he stalks her! In real life, such a guy would have a restraining order out against him or end up killing his "lady love" in some sort of psychotic murder-suicide spree! Others may have laughed at his "cute" advances towards this poor woman--I just felt uneasy.Later, this lady travels to Iraq just as the war is beginning which begs the question "is she 100% insane?!". And, shortly after arriving, she naturally is severely injured and is dying. When Begnini finds out, he drops everything in Rome and travels against all odds to Baghdad to do everything he can to save her. This portion of the film is actually pretty sweet, as he works so hard to keep her alive--it's quite touching,...though once again, I had to remind myself that he IS a stalker and traveled a couple thousand miles into a war zone because of his bizarre obsession.Strengths of the film were Begnini's performance (though at times, it did come off as essentially the same guy he was in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL) and the latter half of the film (while not great--it was light-years ahead of the first half). Deficits were choppy editing and storytelling, occasionally confusing writing, an uncomfortable juxtaposition of comedy with tragedy and stalking as well as Jean Reno's inexplicable character--his motivations and everything about him seemed ill-defined and confusing. The bottom line is that despite being a very talented man, this is a huge letdown for Begnini and isn't an especially good film. Watchable but quite flawed.FYI--Nicoletta Braschi is Begnini's real-life wife and they have starred in quite a few films together.

Roberto Benigni is such a likable guy. He's also one of the most talkative, if you've seen any of his films. Man, this guy rattles off sentences so fast it almost gives me a headache. It's doubly tough when you have to read a lot of subtitles in a hurry to keep up with him! It's also not easy when you're not quite sure what's going on, at least in the first third of the movie as scenes switch with a number of flashbacks. By the 25-minute mark of this movie, I was worn out to sort everything out and follow Benigni's rapid-fire speech. He also has a strange way - at least to us Americans - of expressing himself and his humor. He's definitely different. No sense going into the rest of the story as other reviewers have capably done that. Overall, it was a nice story and it had some very touching moments. You have to root for Benigni's good-hearted character, "Attilio, "who certainly deserved a better wife than he got. His kids were super, nice girls. Also fun to watch and hear was Tom Waits, who plays the piano and sings throughout the film on-screen. One more thing: there was no preaching about the war in Iraq. The filmmakers were smart enough to let the viewer think for themselves.

I missed Roberto Benigni & and I miss his good movies .. and not since "A Beautiful Life" he has directed a successful movie.This movie is poetic and I wish I speak Italian to understand all the nice poetic speeches and the Italian poems.As in "A Beautiful Life" Benigni mixes the tragedy with a light comedy that is funny and touching in the same time.His performance was good .. Jean Reno was good .. Nicoletta Braschi wasn't bad.It is a good movie that you will fell in love with it if you are a Benigni fan ..and will at least like it if not.

The Tiger and the Snow is a beautiful romantic movie, and it opened quite perfectly with an awesome ballad "You Can Never Hold Back Spring", performed by Tom Waits himself. Written and directed by Italian Roberto Benigni (famed for the wonderful LIfe is Beautiful), he also stars as the lead Attilio de Giovanni, a lovestruck poet who falls for a woman in his recurring dreams.Only of course, to wake up each time he dreams of them at the alter, and when she is about to declare her undying love for him, punctuated with promises of hot sex. Yes, you read that right. But I digress. In reality, he's an absent minded poetry professor who always forgets where he parks his car. But despite his quirky looks and demeanor (are Benigni's characters always like that I wonder), imagine the pandemonium within him when he finally meets the woman in his dreams, Vittoria (the object of his obsession played by wife in real life Nicoletta Braschi), an acquaintance of fellow writer Fuad (Jean Reno).Meeting in the dreams, and meeting for real can hardly be any different, and his infatuation with and love for Vittoria goes unrequited. Until of course we examine through to the rest of the movie, how unconditional and large this love for her is, when he takes it upon himself to journey to and through war-strife Iraq to save her from injury, through hell and high water, in dogged pursuit of elements that can save the love of his life.Although infused with bits of comedy now and then, the movie takes a long hard look at how much one will do for someone else whom you love deeply. It might be a case of "nothing is impossible", given the will and the affection. But what if you know that what you're doing will likely to be unnoticed, or unappreciated, or unrequited. Then what? Hence the power of unconditional love. Truly very rare indeed. Should you feel, as the movie progresses, that certain bits seemed a little out of place, my advice is to persevere until the end, where a sleight of hand twist is introduced, and given the 20/20 hindsight, you'll begin to ponder, and understand this love a little more.It's bittersweet, and with moments that might touch you. But alas, this is no Life is Beautiful, and although it has its moments with the beautiful make belief cinematographic elements in the end, it somehow lacked that extra bit of emotional depth to truly move an audience.Oh, and that fellow blonde teacher, now she's hot!