Johnny Stecchino

I think I learned Italian from this movie, I watched it so many times.

I've simply never loved a movie as so cute and funny as this, its well worth tracking it down, Its still pretty available if you know the right places to look.

Roberto and Nicoletta are perfect together on and off screen, truly a mating of Eagles as the Romans would say.

take the perfect vaudeville act, Where you have some idiot who is just a heart of Gold, mix in a scheming Mafia donna, take a bunch of Italians in good suits add a little illegal narcotics done by politicans.

Steal a banana or two, and then change places with a murderous Cut throat assasino. What do you get? Superb cinema.

Still the most successful film financially in the history of the Italian cinema, Roberto Benigni's "Johnny Stecchino" displays the actor's out-of-this-world talents. The movie is a tale of a high-class mobster named Johnny Stecchino (Benigni) who has testified against many crime syndicates to avoid prison time and is now in hiding. Enter the dim-witted Dante (Benigni again) who is discovered by Stecchino's wife (real-life wife Nicoletta Braschi) and is then unwittingly made to look, dress and act just like her criminal husband so Dante will be killed instead. The plan will hopefully allow Stecchino to leave the country with no difficulty. The mistaken identity routine plays amazingly well as Benigni dominates the action as he always seems to do. The supporting cast is good enough to keep the project above water. Benigni continues to be a master performer and cinematic craftsman. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

7/10

I thoroughly recommend this film. Some jokes may go over the head of non-Italian speakers but it shouldn't really ruin your enjoyment of a classic Benigni film. My favourite scene was when "lo zio" (the uncle) was driving Dante back from Palermo train station and explaining the problems of Sicilian life to him - I nearly p*****d myself!

For anyone who questions Roberto Benigni's talent as a comic, rent Johnny Stecchino. In Life is Beautiful Benigni showed us his gift as a director/storyteller/artist, in Johnny Stecchino Roberto Benigni demonstrates why a nation of 70 million (Italy) have loved this man long before North America saw Life is Beautiful. Johnny Stecchino was written and directed by Benigni and exemplifies his genius as a physical comic and comedy writer. The story is hilarious and will have you dying of laughter. By the way, if you really have no knowledge the Italian language you may miss some key one-liners which simply cannot be translated but you will get the overall "gist" of this extremely funny film.

I just watched the 1991 Italian movie "Johnny Stecchino" (or "Johnny Toothpick") on video. One of my all-time favorite films is "La Vita è bella" ("Life is Beautiful", 1997), another film that Roberto Benigni also directed, co-wrote, and played the lead role in. When I saw a preview of Benigni's comedy "Johnny Stecchino", I had to see the movie.

Benigni is truly a gifted man with comic elements that remind me in this film of the Marx Brothers in physicality and Mr. Bean in amazing simple ignorance. He plays a dual role. As Dante, a bus driver for a group of retarded young adults, he is hopelessly clueless and the highlight of his daily routine seems to be playing a silly trick (every day?! won't the fruit sellers catch on?!) resulting in his stealing a banana for his breakfast. He also plays a mafioso type, Johnny Stecchino, who has snitched on his fellow criminals and is now hiding for fear of his life.

Dante runs into lovely Maria (Nicoletta Braschi) who is really Johnny's wife, but she feigns an inexplicable attraction for Dante. She invites Dante to her grand villa in Palermo (Sicily), where we understand her true plot to have the lookalike simpleton killed so she can live happily with her Johnny.

The film is a comedy of misunderstandings with scenes of stolen bananas, introducing a shocked Roman Catholic Cardinal to cocaine (mistakenly as a diabetic medicine), the two look-alikes running into each other and the criminal pretending to be a mirror to keep himself hidden, a group of seeming mafiosi being led by Dante in singing a children's song enunciating the sounds that various animals make (is this an inside Italian joke, as this reminds me of the 1991 Italian film "Caro Diario" - see <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0109382/usercomments-12> ?!), and more. Though I wish that Johnny didn't use offensive language, it was otherwise a zany and funny film showing off Benigni's comic genius. Santa Cleopatra!

--Dilip Barman, May 21, 2004