ROBERTO BENIGNI - MOVIE REVIEWS: THE TIGER AND THE SNOW

If Pan's Labyrinth is receiving some of the best reviews of the year, Roberto Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow is receiving some of the worst. The first feature set in war-torn Iraq, it's being called by Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times, "a scorching affront to Italians, Iraqis and the intelligence of movie audiences everywhere." Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News writes that the movie is virtually an updated version of Benigni's Life Is Beautiful, but is "built on a teetering pile of pratfalls. ... Zany where it should be charming, self-congratulatory where it should be generous, this misguided project looks for love in all the wrong places." Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times calls the film "shameless, utterly predictable and grimly unfunny nonsense" and says that it consolidates Benigni's position "as the most self-indulgent and altogether insufferable showoff in the movies." And V.A. Musetto in the New York Post predicts that the movie, unlike Life Is Beautiful, which won three Oscars, won't be on anybody's awards list this year. "The only award Benigni's misconceived and unfunny The Tiger and the Snow could possibly win is for Worst Movie of 2006," he writes.

29/12/2006