C’è Chi Dice No is a story we’ve seen before – in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, Danny De Vito’s Throw Mamma From The Train, and various sitcoms and Lifetime movies, with a dash of Network’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” thrown in for good measure.
They go like this: two or more people compare notes and find they have something in common. Each has an arch-enemy, one that they would love to be rid of and so agreements are made. In Strangers on a Train one man proposes to another that he will kill the other’s wife and in exchange, the favor will be returned and the other man will kill his father. It’s the “perfect” crime, since each will have an alibi and no obvious connection to the murders.
In C’è Chi Dice No, Max, Irma and Samuele ( Luca Argentero, Paola Cortellesi, and Paolo Ruffini) want their arch enemies eliminated, but they are willing to do it without bloodshed. When the trio of old school buddies lose jobs that they are more qualified for to people less qualified but more connected, they make their pact. Each do for the others what he or she would get caught doing for themselves, and they do it in amusing ways (like convincing a woman from Australia that the mafia is after her).
Here’s the good news about C’è Chi Dice No: It’s a fresh and relevant approach to the cinematic paradigm. Here in America, we complain, and many times rightly so, about nepotism and about having to know somebody to get jobs; compared to Italians, we don’t know the half of it.
In America, no matter how many spoiled rich kids’ dads get them jobs, you can still roll up your sleeves and with hard work make something of yourself – you might even do better than the spoiled rich kid. In Italy, sometimes no amount of hard work will get you ahead because what your father does still matters and a certain class system still exists. C’è Chi Dice No is a movie in which the underdogs stick it to the privileged and humiliate “the man”. Movies about sticking it to rich guys are pretty universally entertaining.
More good news – the characters are attractive young people, something that seems like an ovbious element for a making a popular movie and yet Italy doesn’t do enough of.
Here’s where director Giambattista Avellino made his mistakes:
The pace is too slow. Too many long, sentimental gazes between the friends. Too much time developing the evil plans to foil the enemies. Too many wrong turns in the plot (example: Enza. Did Luca Argentero ask Avellino to stick his wife, Myriam Catania, in the movie at the last minute or something?).
Another problem – some of the plans to foil the enemies were just stupid. Having a bunch of pizzas delivered to a rival’s house? What are they; 9-year-old girls at a slumber party?
One more thing – the chemistry between Max and Irma was a little underwhelming. If you’re going to throw a love story into it the lovers have to be convincing.
Never-the-less, this movie is a step in the right direction. It’s not the best I’ve ever seen, but it’s amusing. It’s not available for US zone 1 DVD players, but you can order if from Amazon or ibs.it if you have a PAL zone 2 or a zone free DVD player, and you can watch it with English subtitles.
I Love Italian Everything 