Diamantino - Il calciatore più forte del mondo

Just because you toss whatever is in the kitchen cupboards & fridge into a pot doesn't necessarily mean it's a nutritious tasty meal. So it was with my take on this script. I suppose no direction/cohesiveness w/giant animated pink fluffy dogs running around (Suppose to mean anything?) can be funny. For the ladies our lead actor spends a lot of time lifting (probably with a large mirror) so that's a positive.

..you must be at least as stupid as the lead character of this movie.

Ok, it's comedy; ok, it's allegorical; ok, it's satyrical.

But still, it's all based on the dumbness of Diamantino, and everything is so in your face: no surprises, no plot twists, no emotions.

All characters are one-sided_ the good (and dumb), the bad, and the bad-soon-to-be-good,

The movie made me smile at the beginning, during the dreamy soccer scene, but that's all.

I actually did not fully undestand why the "daughter" had to be disguised as a "daughter", making it even less credible. Maybe in order to avoid any sexual harassment by DIamantino?

Anyway, this movie is avoidable. Best part: the last couple of minutes..

The premise is straight out of a cheesy lifetime movie: a retired soccer player adopts a refugee and grows up, but it's so much weirder and queerer than that at every turn. Visually sumptuous, shot on film gives it a glow and helps make the iffy CG look like a deliberate choice. Diamantino is an achingly sweet and earnest character so he's easy to love, lost amongst the scheming political evils of our day.

Im sitting in my couch this very moment wondering what i just watched. The politics of this movie are... wierd. Ig to have a lesbian couple break up just so diamontino (a man) can have a romantic relationship with what in his head is a child boy who he rescues from poverty is an odd (to put it lightly) decision from the directors. The movie would work perfectly without the lesbian (Aisha) turning straight due to dimantinos massive honkers. The exact same stuff could have happened without the need of converting a lesbian, Aisha could've pretended to be a boy indefinitely, she could've said that she was a secret agent saving him or some bullcrap. Another example is the ideas surrounding EU and immigration, i think the movies message is EU good, Nationalist bad? And that immigrants shouldn't die crossing the ocean?

What does this movie want to tell me? So the message of this movie is totally lost on me.

I tried to conjure up an absurd math equation which addressed the moving pieces that constitute Diamantino's 'plot' and gave up after "Comically evil twin sisters + Childlike megastar athlete ÷ (lesbian government spy couple - undercover refugee) = ..." The beauty of this is in not knowing what will happen next. Many movies can and actively do strive for unpredictability, but here is the rare reality of that achievement realized. It's cheap, in a way, just attempting that. I don't believe this film comes together in the end, but it has a lot of fun trying.

The central visual idea, which is plastered on the movie poster and might just be the only thing you know about this even if you don't totally about it, is that Diamantino (definitely not Ronaldo) is an internationally famous Portuguese soccer star who loves putting nutella on things and who, when 'in the zone', transports to a magical land of pink clouds and giant fluffy dogs. It's a visual metaphor for something that the viewer will likely either get immediately or scoff at. Thankfully, I found myself among the former.

The visual FX themselves are charming. Not just the green-screened pups bouncing (and eventually launching off into space) but the weird poorman's Minority Report tech setups and computer OS designs. Their feeling unreal added to the flow of this in such a nice, lowkey way.

I wouldn't necessarily say that the overtly political elements of the story bogged things down, but at times their prevalence made some of the general wackiness feel like shtick instead of an inspired genesis, and even more of a bizarre pairing when the film transforms into a full-on love story.

While it's far from perfect, I would definitely recommend this as something you need to see to believe, and the less said the better.