Banana Joe

Italo comedy about a simple burly banana salesman who gets into wacky situations while trying to obtain a license to sell bananas. Everything is over-the-top and Cheesy with a capital 'C' (and the crummy dubbing doesn't help matters). Very uneven movie that halfway kept my attention, made me laugh once or twice with it's cartoonish humor, but also had plenty of annoying moments. The song sequence in the middle, the sound effects, and the repeated 'Joe Blow' joke come to mind as especially awful. Even as background watching this fails for me, it's just so unbearably stupid... but at the same time I can see it having an audience.

Banana Joe(Bud Spencer) is a corpulent and kind illiterate living on a tropical island in the Caribe. He trades bananas when a mobster named Torsillo wishes to take his commerce. Then , for first time in his existence, he goes to big city for getting an identity certificate . There he knows a beautiful singer named Dorianne(Marina), facing off dangers, truck racers(with usual Peplum, Nello Pazzafini as a Torsillo's truck driver) and several adventures.

This is a good amusing juvenile for Bud Spencer fans, but he's delight; it packs action, fist-play, slapdash, humor with tongue and check and is quite entertaining. This release has some cool and even hilarious moments, though the Terence Hill-Bud Spencer duo films are better. The film isn't always good , sometimes is fresh and diverting and on a couple of memorable occasions ,it's frankly delicious. The movie displays innumerable laughters and slapstick, including a sour satyr about bureaucracy and the army when Banana Joe is forced to enlist for obtaining a identity document. Sympathetic screenplay by the usual, Mario Amendola, Bruno Corbucci and Carlo Perdesoli(alias Bud Spencer). Catching musical score with noisy songs by Guido and Mauricio De Angelis(Spaghetti Western habitual). The motion picture is professionally directed by Steno, Stefano Vanzina(father of Carlo Vanzina). He wrote and directed in the 60s Toto vehicles(Toto vs the four, Two colonels); Walter Chiari and Raimondo Vianello shows(Heroes of the West, Twins from Texas). In the 70s and 80s directed Bud Spencer movies about Flatfoot or Rizzo, also called Piedone, such as, Flatfoot in Hong Kong, Piedone in Africa, Flatfoot in Egypt. And in the 80s directed TV series , the Professore Jack Clementi, again with Bud Spencer.

Joe is a good man, that lives in a south American forest commercing bananas in surrounding villages. He doesn't have a surname, an identity document, a selling licence: this became a problem when local crime attempt to seize the bananas commerce of the state...... A good comedy, ironic (in the style of Corbucci), and with the usual iron punch of Bud Spencer! (here without his classic buddy Terence Hill).

This movie has been in my mind for a while because I watched it when I was a little kid and I have fond memories of it, and because I found this movie very funny in my child mind, I decided to rewatch it after more than 30 years, and after I finished Banana Joe, I realized why I found it so funny when I was a child because this movie is so silly and dumb in every sense and only a 7-year-old child can find it funny.

When I was a child, my family had one television, and there was only one channel, so I had no choice other than Saturday cartoons. I remember this movie being frequently shown every Sunday, and it seemed fun, so I watched it. This movie was made in 1982, which is the year I was born, and I have to say its humor is not only terribly aged; it's also so juvenile and idiotic, and the editing is terribly done; unrelated scenes just merge with each other without any sense; all characters are basically cartoony caricatures or stereotypes, so actors played these characters with exaggerated manners; and the main character is big, burly, uncivilized, illiterate, and dumb as a rock banana seller. He didn't know his surname or his family; he didn't have an identification card or a license for trading bananas. As an American, he also didn't know how he came to Colombia. Is he an illegal immigrant, or was he just born here? We just didn't know about this character. Plot, which is about a cartoony capitalistic dude who wants to build a factory Banana Joe's small village and our big hero try to prevent his mission and get a trading license in some comedic situations and adventures that are so silly and cheesy. There are also some pathetic attempts to create physical comedy, which only little kids can find amusing and laugh at.

If you consider this movie a kid's movie, that's fine, but Banana Joe lasts more than 1:30 hours, so for an adult audience, it's just a waste of time. I just watched this movie for nostalgic purposes, and I don't regret spending time on this silly and stupid movie, despite the fact that I probably lost a few digits from my IQ. I also want to say that I love the exotic and tropical southern Colombian settings and catchy background music, but that's the only positive thing I can say about this outdated movie.

And that's exactly what it is; pure bud enjoyment. OK, it's not a Fellini and in the stream of the ''big booted comedies'' Spencer and hill got us used with, this one fits perfectly. But look closer. Buffoons are never recognized to their full value. If Pedersoli was to play dramatic roles with the same intensity as the one he gives to his comedy characters to make us happy, he would have been one of the most recognized actor of the times. Unfortunately, in banana Joe people tend to see only the comedy part of the movie. But the satyr about the economic system and the bureaucracy is so delightful... I gave this movie a score of 7 for overall quality and intelligence in its credo. Thank you Mr. Pedersoli for having made the choice of becoming a comedian over a dramatist.