My review was written in October 1985 after watching the film at a Columbus Circle screening room.
"Macaroni" is a mild comedy-drama teaming the formidable talents of Jack Lemmon and Marcello Mastroianni. Stronger in expression of honest sentiment than in its humorous component, the picture faces weak theatrical prospects via Paramount release as a pickup. It was originally scheduled to be an HBO Premiere Films presentation domestically (a slot it would fill comfortably) until the pay-cable outfit dropped out of the project.
Jack Lemmon toplines as Bob Traven (the joke on the mysterious novelist B. Traven's name is never explicit here), a v.p. At McDonnell Douglas visiting Naples as a consultant to Aeritalia. It's his first time back since 1946 when, as a G.i., he was stationed there.
As an acquaintance from that period whom he has completely forgotten, Antonio Jasiello (Marcello Mastroianni) looks Traven up and takes the at-first unwilling (too busy) American around town to meet the family and friends.
It seems that everybody knows Traven, because Jasiello has been surreptitiously writing letters using Traven's name over the years to his own sister Maria, who had a brief romance in 1946 with the American. She's long-since been married and now has adult grandchildren.
Relying too heavily on its two stars, at first abrasive adversaries but later best of friends as Lemmon unbends to Mastroianni's exuberant joie de vivre, "Macaroni" rarely achieves the comedic heights of director Ettore Scola's previous work. There simply isn't an abundance of funny situations or witty dialog here.
Best sequence has amateur playwright Mastroianni filling in as the villain in one of his monthly poverty productions. Heavily made-up (and looking oddly like the late Ernie Kovacs), Mastroianni is genuinely funny in the brief skit acted with Italian dialog.
Elsewhere, this English-language film is hampered by the dialog, with merely okay readings by Mastroianni, artificial dubbing of Isa Danieli as his empathetic wife and rote, direct-sound speeches by Daria Nicolodi as Aeritalia's p.r. Officer. Thesps' acting is okay but diluted by the language distraction.
Lemmon throws himself into his role with customary passion, pumping life into some routine scenes. Pic would have benefited from some period flashback material set in 1946 (especially given Scola's work in his 1974 "We All Loved Each Other So Much") but is rooted in the present. A contrived, melancholy ending doesn't come off.
Tech credits are merely adequate, with Naples' natural beauty shining through Claudio Ragona's strictly functional photography.
