Il mio miglior nemico

i liked this movie a lot.I rented this expecting something not too bad to spend an evening.It turned out a particularly satisfying experience. Some scenes were hilarious and managed to be so in a movie not intended to be just a stupid slapstick comedy but with some meaning and moral values.It manages on both counts.The leads are all good but especially the guy who stars,also wrote and produced the movie.I've never seen any of these actors before, but they were likable and made me care about what happens to them in the end which is saying a lot.The script is clever and involving and has a refreshing feel to it. I think you wont be disappointed to watch this.

"Ten nominations to the Davids", "pleasant surprise", "delightful". With these words in my head, I chose to see "Il mio miglior nemico", otherwise a movie I would have avoided. What a disappointment. The plot is predictable and trite, the funny sequences are all in the trailer. Why did it have all that success at the box office last year? Maybe for Silvio Muccino, an Italian girls' idol together with Riccardo Scamarcio.

The least said the pushy advertising for Vodafone, a mobile operator. Except for Carlo Verdone, always perfect, the actors aren't so good. Silvio Muccino (Orfeo Rinalduzzi) is inexperienced, Ana Caterina Morariu (Cecilia) is pretty but dull, Agnese Nano (Gigliola) has the hateful role of the hysterical wife, Corinne Jiga (Ramona) has the job to show her curvaceous body for the men viewers.

Definitely a movie I will forget very, very soon.

I really enjoyed this movie. The humor was a bit absent at times but I enjoyed how the story moved between dramatic and serious throughout the film. This is the only the second movie where I saw Verdone acting (the other was 'Un sacco bello'), and I can see why Italians find him tiresome, but he think he played his role well as the loving father.

My one drawback with this movie was that I knew it took place in Italy - somewhere in the center or south, I presume, but I felt like there was no representation of a place. This movie could have taken place in New York, Boston, Melbourne, New Dehli...I always think it is important for movies to have a place to give the viewers something to relate to. (Maybe I missed something?) :) If you like Italian films, then I think that you will enjoy this. It's not a Fellini or a Rossellini - it's not realism or neo-realism. It's a comical story with serious moments that could really happen to any of us.

Carlo Verdone once managed to combine superb comedy with smart and subtle social analysis and criticism.

Then something happened, and he turned into just another dull "holier-than-thou" director.

Il Mio Miglior Nemico can more or less be summarized in one line "working class = kind and warm, while upper-class = snob and devious. But love wins in the end".

Such a trite clichè for such a smart director.

There isn't really too much to talk about in the movie. Every character is a walking stereotype: the self-made-man who forgets his roots but who'll become "good" again, the scorned wife, the rebellious rich girl who falls for the honest-but-poor guy... Acting is barely average.

Severely disappointing under every aspect.

As the two leaders of this Italian comedy, one is the director and another is the co-writer, one can speculate that the self-involved commitment is much stronger and the intentions of capturing comedy with plus little dramatic touch is overt. But the outcome is a little bit as expected.

I have to say that it is quite easy to love this film from its slapstick beginning, then with its mainline gradually unveiling, the story becomes cheap, luckily as far as the Italian humor remains, it is still enjoyable.

Comedy is the most difficult genre to make for a film especially with an ambition of being universal. One has to omit a lot of distinguishing features to meet the tastes from different cultural backgrounds, which in my opinion is easier to achieve (for example by making the story conventional as what this film did), it gains more audience meanwhile loses much more admiration.

The acting is unbalanced, I totally enjoy the performance of Carlo Verdone (also the director of this film), but others are banal, young actors need experience and training.

I cannot blame too much of this film for not being great, as there are tons of shameless garbage comedies everywhere, even in the still developing Chinese film market, which are much worse than this one.

If there was a laughter-counter at present while we were watching this film, this film could be qualified for the amount of funny moments, although it is uneven, or maybe the fact is that our thresholds of laughing are lowered.

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