joelsloane

I saw this "thing" (it doesn't deserve to be called a film) when it was released and I was absolutely dumbstruck at the favorable reaction it received; I continued to be amazed when it actually was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and actually won Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor for Benigni.

This movie sounds only wrong notes from beginning to end. Perhaps the Holocaust has become too far removed in history to allow modern audiences (especially American ones) to realize that it has been wildly mythologized and horribly distorted in this trash.

Those who "just loved" this movie -- as well as the members of the Academy who nominated it for Best Picture, etc. -- should talk to some of the quickly disappearing Survivors of the death camps; it will make them realize what a cinematic abortion Benigni has wrought. The "dramatic" moments are laughable, and the "comedic" moments are embarrassingly "cute". Benigni's "acting" (as well as that of his wife Nicoletta Braschi) is totally amateurish too. Those who compare Benigni to Chaplin have probably never seen a Chaplin FILM

My wife and I tried to watch this movie three times. The first time we stopped after 20 minutes or so, because we both got very bored. Then, after reading some of the positive reviews on this forum, we felt that perhaps we were missing something, and decided to give it another try. We restarted watching it from the beginning, and this time around we endured 45 minutes of it before shutting it off, concluding that either we were indeed missing something, or that this is simply an unwatchable film.

Finally, after reading more positive reviews, I decided to re-watch the film to its conclusion, again re-starting it from the beginning -- my wife, who, although she once vowed "to be true to me in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health," actually REFUSED to share this punishment with me.

I've now concluded that I didn't miss anything, and that this film is simply an awkwardly and unsubtly written and directed exercise in cinematic self-indulgence (the movie is in fact based on the writer-director Mike Mills' personal experience).

And what does this experience consist of?

After the death of his mother from cancer, a young man in his thirties finds out that his 75-year-old father is gay; the father gets involved with a younger lover, and soon dies of cancer himself. The writer-director makes it abundantly clear, in no subtle ways, that the son is very saddened by his father's death-e.g. the son, a graphic artist, is working on a cartoon series titled "The Sads" (!). The son, who has difficulties "committing," eventually begins a romance with a young French woman.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot, the son is now left with his father's cute Jack Russell terrier ("Harry"), whose thoughts are indicated in subtitles

This riveting plot is told in an arty, disjointed way, where past and present are constantly juxtaposed.

Christopher Plummer (Hal, the father) and Ewan McGregor (Oliver, his son) did the best they could with this trivial confection; Goran Visnjik (Andy, Hal's young lover) looked and sounded totally ridiculous (was he wearing a wig?). As for Mélanie Laurent (Anna, Oliver's French girlfriend), I could hardly understand her. Fortunately, her scenes with McGregor consist mostly of long, meaningless silences.

Being a big-time dog and cat lover, I found the little Jack Russell ("Harry") absolutely cute and engaging -- though, even here, I found that giving him occasional subtitles was perhaps a bit TOO cute -- and further betrayed the director's desperation.

The only thing that could possibly have made this film worse is if instead of Ewan McGregor they had cast Matthew McConaughey as Oliver.

This is a poor film adaptation of C.P. Taylor's stage play. I can see how this drama may have been much more effective on stage; unfortunately, under Vicente Amorim's amateurish direction this story loses all its impact as a motion picture.

Although others on this board have complained about Mortensen's performance, as well as the use of British accents, I happen not to agree: Mortensen's against-type performance was excellent, and the use of British accents served to constantly remind us that the characters were foreign, and, at the same time, allowed us to understand them. (Mortensen and others speaking in their native American accents would have been much more incongruous and jarring).

My main complaint about this movie is that it adds absolutely nothing to our knowledge of the Holocaust. It's an entirely superfluous film.