Sotto una buona stella

Carlo Verdone is a very good Italian film maker. He is a prolific author and an excellent actor with innate comic timing: he usually stars in movies he also writes and directs. We owe him many beautiful Italian comedies: 'Io e Mia Sorella' (released in 1987) probably still is his best work.

I do not watch many Italian films and if you are familiar with current Italian offer you will easily understand why. This movie however caught me with its trailer.

Unfortunately, despite the good acting (Carlo Verdone and Paola Cortellesi above all) the overall artistic level is very low: characters are roughly sketched and the audience is asked to believe a poorly inspired sequence of events. Funny moments are rare and of a kind that would fit better in a serial than into a comedy. Even the song ('La mia buona stella') is so bad that it would take balls to perform it in a High School talent show.

Verdone seems to condensate here some of his most repetitive schemes and stylistic devices, and the result is a bit insubstantial. Even humour is confined just to some sketches in romanesco. Surely not one of his best movies