Mes chers amis

Look. If you're not Italian, or at least you don't speak Italian and you see a translated version, probably you won't get it. I don't know how the various pranks like the "supercazzola" have been translated and how they sound like. Here they sound like pure genius. I know a lot of people, scattered through the nation, that just WORSHIP this film, probably thanks to the fact that this movie is quite an underdog, neither a mainstream film, nor an artistically praised "commedia all'italiana". But who cares about artistical merits. The characters and the situations are so lively like is rarely seen. The film is an humble tale about life, women, friendship and death, with five men using their wits to avoid the tragedies of their lives. It's a lesson about taking life with a light heart, even if things are terribly grim. I think that the final laugh means it's all about that.

PS Excuse me for the bad English. I'm Italian and i'm supposed to do a lot of errors!

Italian comedy has never been as pure and simple as in Amici Miei. Many Italian comedic actors have taken inspiration from this gem. Unfortunately, this movie is not available to the greater audiences in the US. I saw this movie when it was released and many times after that. Grazie, Mario!

Ah well now I'm having fun! Reviewing AMICI MIEI is like diving into a tub of champagne after just getting drunk, there are so many things that come back to your memory and make you smile that it would be enough to list them. But I won't do this, I will instead say something more significant for us Italians, this film (and its trilogy) is and will always be the best comedy produced in Italy. Point! He expressed in the most true and realistic way a cross-section of the best way of experiencing friendship in the Sixties/Seventies, a true, sincere, inter-class friendship, I would dare say almost a brotherhood. There are truly irresistible, contagious hints of irony, which we would all have liked or tried to make fun of like Count Mascetti played by a splendid Ugo Tognazzi, or to pose as the professor. Sassaroli (Adolfo Celi), or why not fall in love like the architect Melandri (Gastone Moschin), manage a bar like Perozzi (Duillio Del Prete and Renzo Montagnani) and go on "escapes" like Perozzi (Philippe Noiret). How beautiful, what a pleasure, how many memories... a cult film, authentic inspiration for entire generations! Masterpiece by Mario Monicelli.

OK, again another Monicelli's masterpiece (based on an idea of the genius Pietro Germi). This movie talks about: friendship, comrade's, love, sex, loneliness, betrayal, fun, sadness, death, sons. In one sentence: it talks about life.

There is a lot of FUN in this movie, as the main characters seem to never grow up, they just want to joke about everything, NOTHING is really THAT important or serious to be spared by jokes. The son of the journalist is more mature and serious than his father... remember that we are in 1975 and this is absolutely counter-intuitive!! in that period young people were fighting on the streets for freedom of thoughts, of sex, and for political reasons!! Well, in some ways young people during that period were more socially "committed" than their fathers who wanted to preserve the status quo.

In this movie however the middle-aged characters make fun of the status quo: the broken noble betrays his wife for a teen-ager, the surgeon does not care to leave the hospital in troubles for joining his friends, the journalist does not understand his son and never tries to, the architect wants to conquer the heart of a married woman, etc... it's like: "OK, you youngsters do not care about the old moral rules? we, your fathers, too, even more than you..."

It's also a sad movie, as this search for continuous fun is a sign that something is wrong in their lives. The architect leaves his new family to join the company for the joke at the train station, as he is fed up with all the problems a real and traditional family provide. Normality is boring and annoying. Fun comes from friends and from breaking the moral or society rules. It's better a good joke (even a cruel one) and have fun than keep a normal life-style and be bored (this is a philosophy that some Italians really have).

There is plenty of UNpolitically correct situations... feminist people can be very nervous seeing this movie... remember that it's a movie that reflects a particular culture, the Tuscany of almost forty years ago (the movie is set in the 60's). But real love is not banned in this movie... it's just a cynic point of view (real love ends up eventually, when it becomes normal life).

I have seen several times this movie and every time I enjoy it. Also the sequel is good, but the first is just incredible. Do not miss this movie. You'll have lots of laughs and an essay about certain Italian culture.

MY FRIENDS is originally a project for Italian writer/director Pietro Germi, whose untimely death in 1974 at the age of 60, leaves the film to be taken over by another maestro of the Commedia all'Italiana, Mario Monicelli. The film was a whopping box-office success, which subsequently would spawn two sequels, Monicelli would be back in the saddle with ALL MY FRIENDS PART 2 (1982) and ALL MY FRIENDS PART 3 (1985) would be outsourced to Nanni Loy.

A double-bill of these two Monicelli's vehicles, set in Florence, MY FRIENDS has a quartet core of middle-aged men: Count Lello Mascetti (Tognhzzi), a down-and-out ex-nobleman who has squandered all his fortunes, can only slum it in a tiny basement with his suicide-driven wife Alice (Vukotic) and their daughter, which doesn't dissuade him from being smitten with an underage student Titti (Dionisio), who has a predilection for girls over men; the second one is Giorgio Perozzi (Noiret), a journalist separated from his wife Laura (Goodwin) and is irreconcilably at adds with his prim adult son; then there is Rambaldo Melandri (Moschin), a bachelor architect, determined to find his perfect half and lastly is Guido Necchi (Del Prete), married with Carmen (Tamantini) and they own a bar which serves as their haunt.

Life is anything but optimistic, Pietro Germi and co.'s script conscientiously draws the milieu from reality, in both Mascetti and Perozzi's cases, one might easily finds company in distress and self- abandonment, but, not these four, feeding on their staunch friendship, the fold never relinquish their idiosyncratic practical jokes and escapades, mostly ingenious and borderline harmless, counting their classic passengers-slapping when a train departs and Mascetti's trademark "supercazzola" gibberish. And following Melandri's tireless pursuit of a married woman, Donatella (Karlatos), an embodiment of Madonna with psychological hiccups, a fifth member, Professor Sassaroli (Celi) is introduced, a renowned surgeon and the husband of Donatella, who is perversely liberal about the affair and is more than happy to not stand in their way if they are really made for each other, and of course, they are not, but Sassaroli is here to stay.

One of their most detailed skits involves a penny-pinching pensioner Righi (Blier), who is hustled into believing that the quartet belongs to a mafia mob, with Sassaroli as their boss, dangled by the profitable income, Righi buckles down to join in their "dangerous" line-of-work, and their adventure culminates in a self-organized gangster melee, which leaves Righi in chagrin, utterly side-splitting thanks to Blier's bang-up po-faced bearing. The coda of MY FRIENDS deflects to a more sombre streak - a heart attack does Peruzzi in, all happens in a sudden but no grim sorrow is allowed to percolate, his friends keep their comic esprit de corps alive, even death cannot take it away.

ALL MY FRIENDS PART 2 comes 7 years later, the story continues after Peruzzi's abrupt departure, the original cast returns (significantly older) except Del Prete, who is replaced by a more prosaic- looking Renzo Montagnani as Necchi, only the latter is not endowed with Del Prete's dashing and devil-may-care panache.

The part 2 doesn't structurally pigeonhole itself as a strict sequel, owing to the huge pull of Noiret's Perozzi, there are abundant flashbacks charting Perozzi and Mascetti's past stories, which take place earlier than those in the first one, while without ghettoizing Sassaroli out of the picture (the original four becomes a quintet), it conspicuously creates some anachronism for viewers with fresh memory of the first installment. Gallantly interpolating the flood of Arno in 1966, the story manages to expound on Perozzi's marriage disintegration and take a taunting spin on Melandri's another devoted courtship to a voluptuous but God-fearing young girl Noemi (Giordano).

Contriving an act of pulling Pisa tower back in perpendicular, gate-crushing a singing contest with a risqué song a cappella in the presence of cardinals, a chirpy caper involving a Spanish contortionist (Da Silva), their shticks never disappoint, meanwhile Mascetti has his own familial problem when his slow-witted daughter is impregnated by an unknown rapist and decides to become an unwed mother. Finally, a guest performance from Paolo Stoppa as Savino, a Shylock to whom Mascetti is indebted, he would fall prey into the quartet's pranks (includes a scatological one which sublimely tips the scale), and undergo several "invisible" operations to square off Mascetti's debts. Similarly, another heart attack befalls on one of the main characters near the finish, but this time, to a lesser extent, Tognazzi, Moschin, Noiret and Celi are all sterling comedians, but it is Tognazzi who stands out in his more sympathetic nobleman-in-distress mould.

Inscribing their marks as quintessential pieces of Commedia all'Italiana, both films are salacious, amoral and pathologically funny, although the second one only logically contends to take a leaf from its predecessor's book. But essentially they are not connived as far-fetched escapist fares with a shamelessly patronizing smugness, their gypsyish antics are genuinely devised to imbue a positive vibe out of their quotidian misfortunes, despite that they can never hit the right note of the gender politics, yet, what do you expect from a buddy movie?