Le comiche

The association between craziness and ignorance is unstable and this film distorts every fear, every fear and goes beyond the border. The monotonous rhythm of life, a continuous flow of reasoning and calculation is engraved by the light, the cautious. Le Comiche is the largest fruit inherited from the Italian comedy and the largest father of a new film genre: the new Italian comedy. Vectors of this shift are two sparkling Pozzetto and Villaggio, the first known mask of the typical geek, the other multiform little man in the big world. Exhilarating gags and amazing scenes. From 10 and praise.

My wife and I were vacationing in Rome, Italy when this movie came out. I kept seeing the TV ads and it looked like a lot of fun. Finding ourselves near a movie theater where it was playing, and it being Italian Sieta -- the afternoon portion of the day where all the stores are closed, I suggested to my wife and our two friends that we go see it. Well, we never laughed so hard! Even though the movie was in Italian, the comic sketches are played so broadly, one almost does not need to know Italian to enjoy these two stars (Renatto Pozetto and Paulo Villagio at their best together). When I returned a year later I bought the PAL VHS and had it transferred to NTSC USA standard. My wife and I continue to watch it every year. We also bought the sequel, but it's not as good.

This is a typical and perfect example of Italian "crazy" comedy with Villagio and Pozzeto. Maybe better than crazy would be "Toilet" comedy, as the humor is sometimes quite disgusting and thick - in other words great.

In US only recently some similar films started to appear - Scary Movie 1 and 2 are good examples. Only that Le Comiche movies (It was distributed in Czech Rep. under "Blazniva komedie" - Crazy comedy name) are much better at this, since the Italians (and Villagio in the first place) have years of experience with this genre. But this is no parody, or at least no parody-in-the-first-place. All Comiche movies are rather short stories loosely tied together to arrange situations for the slightly humiliating Villagio-Pozzeto humor.

One example I remember from Le Comiche 2 - Pozzeto and Villagio are making money by selling the vacuum cleaner (hoover) machines. They come to a hotel in Alps to demonstrate the machine - first they start with throwing dust and paper on the carpet and then Villagio gets couple of bags and says: "and now for some s***, this is cow's, the other one is dog's and this one, it is my own, genuine, made it this morning..." Naturally, they end up with piles of shit mixed with cleaing foam and they try to run away as the machine doesn't work (which is just start of the "hotel" story).

So if you really like comedies and are not afraid of toilet humor (and do not mind making fun of pregnant, disabled or ill persons) you should really see Le Comiche. Any of the three is good, but first and the second one are best. By the way - if you'll like Villagio, you should try some of the Fantozzi movies too - though I am not sure if Americans will understand all of the humor there (no pun intended).

No one is safe when these two bunglers arrive who will ruin a wedding, a hotelier, a honeymoon and the lives of several people with accidents, awkwardness and may just plain stupid.