Fantozzi

It's true, Fantozzi is such a cult in Italy that unless you've actually watched at least one movie you're going to miss most jokes by your fellow Italian as at least three out of ten are related to a fantozzi movie somehow:) if you're unlucky or clumsy you are 'fantozzi' and people can pretend to be fantozzi's boss: 'fantozzi, is it you'? One of fantozzi's most popular answers (usually to his boss's magnanimous decision to move him to the basement and increase his shifts from 5 to 8) is to say: "Thank you you are so human" so every time anybody says something evil or mean you can reply jokingly and say 'you're so human':) also his name is hilariously and constantly misspelled 'fantocci' 'bambocci' etc.

but unless you know the fantozzi quotes you won't get the gist of it and you'll be lost to most other who watched the movie(s) lots of times..

enjoy!

Fantozzi is a literary character created by Paolo Villaggio who stars in this film and in all the rest of this franchise. The filmic version of Fantozzi has a much less heavy satire but still very sharp and very enjoyable. Fantozzi is a classic of the Italian Comedy. The first Fantozzi is without any argument the best of the whole franchise.

Fantozzi is such a lovely little movie. It narrates the antics of a lower class office worked employed by a faceless corporation. Paolo Villaggio used to work for a large international company and experienced the daily little humiliations and frustrations so often present in large offices. He used this experience to write a bitterly satirical book by the same title as the movie. Masked behind the funny stories of Fantozzi, there are the horrible realities of the daily work life of a humble worker. The movie is far less profound than the book. The slap-stick comedy is so good that everything else is forgotten. The attention to detail is impressive and can only be appreciated after a second or third vision of the movie. All the characters are very real and can be found in every day life. A must see for all those people that can see through the layer of basic comedy and find the bitter satire of a pointless life. Everybody else will enjoy the slap-stick bits. It can be considered as the granddad of modern classics such as `The Office'.

Despite the absence of an actual plot (the movie is more or less a sequence of sketches), Fantozzi is probably the last hooray of the Italian-style Comedy. Sure, the general tone is much lighter if compared to classic Italian-style Comedies, but nonetheless the fire of a merciless socio-cultural criticism still burns under the see-through veil of the farce.

Accountant Ugo Fantozzi embodies every possible stereotype of your Average middle-class Italian of the 70s. Stuck in a frustrating job, exploited and made fun of by his coworkers, designated victim of his bosses, unhappy and disheartened family man (married to an unbelievably ugly and dull wife, and with a simian daughter), he always seems to draw the shortest straw. No matter what he does, and how hard he tries, Lady Luck will always turn her back on him. Better if after having given him some hope.

But mind you, behind all the improbable situations and the over-the-top comedy stuff, the message is indeed deeper. Everything Fantozzi wishes for is the so-called Italian Dream: after the economical boom of the late 50s, every Italian dreamt about landing a good 9-to-5 job, buying himself a house and a car, living a nice and quiet family life with summer holidays, plenty of hobbies etc. And, should things have gone very well, maybe a mistress too...

Instead, poor Fantozzi is stuck in a rut: he has a second-rate version of all of that... And the more he tries to attain "happiness", the worse it ends.

Clearly, the comedy aspect is prominent, and the movie is also enjoyable for its slapstick comedy, for its sketches and for its caricatural portrait of Italian lower/middle-class. But once the funny parts are an "acquired taste", you can see past it and the sadness of the characters appears, offering a whole new dimension to the movie.

In origin Fantozzi was a literary character, created by Paolo Villaggio himself (who'll star as Fantozzi in all the subsequent movies), and on the written page the social criticism was much heavier. The cinematic version made the satire more enjoyable, probably less sharp, but for sure not less noticeable.

In the end, Fantozzi is a classic of Italian Comedy, and has had a long-lasting impact on Italian language, comedy and society. Every single character, quote and episode is well known in Italy and can easily be "recycled" in everyday's life, even 35 odds years after its original creation.

Had it been "just another silly comedy", it wouldn't had the same impact.

The only real downside of the movie, and of the whole saga, is you have to watch it in Italian, possibly understanding the language to a decent degree. Otherwise many jokes and situations will go over your head

"Fantozzi" are the first of a long series of movie (going more and more ahead it has been arrived to a repetitive comedy). The story speak about the accountant Ugo Fantozzi, a man much ill-fated, and of it's daily adventures, in the office and in the house. All it is drawn from the book "Fantozzi", published in the 1971 by Rizzoli. And it is just this last one that distributes this movie. An enriched film thanks to Villaggio and the rest of the cast (between which Liu Bosisio, Anna Mazzamauro and Gigi Reder). But also thanks to a good script, written without stupidity. It's a full film of catastrophic adventures, in which Fantozzi goes always fall to us, to times without it's will. With this comment I have commented also the other "Fantozzi" films.