Fantozzi

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'.

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 the first step in a long journey of movie that spanned over almost 3 decades. While the more and more the journey proceed, the authors seems to lose a the inspiration and the grip over the story and the peace of the comedy, the first two movies in this installment are a true masterpiece for the Italian culture. As a guy born in Italy in the early 80' I can understand the background and how this movie was somehow a portrait (of course exasperated) of a certain corporate mentality made of cowardice toward the powers and servile attitudes. All the ridiculous adventure of Mr Fantozzi are indeed a description of a desperate and unsuccessful attempt of a middle class man to rise in the society. There is more than it can be written about the Fantozzi series but something has to be said in advance: I can understand if a for a non-Italian this comedy might not be look particularly fun. It is indeed an Italian phenomenon, hard to explain if you have not the right background. I think also that to really appreciate this movie you should be fluent in Italian because most of the fun is lost in translation.

"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.

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!