Italians didn’t like the movie Bar Sport very much and there are so many reasons for the rest of us to forget this forgettable film, but there are a few things worth mentioning about it. Directed by Massimo Martelli and based on a very popular book by Stefano Benni, it’s about the Italian bar and the people who frequent them, and it’s an interesting study on what goes wrong making a movie, particularly a movie from a book.
Here’s why it should have been good:
It would seem unlikely that Claudio Bisio, Giuseppe Battiston, Angela Finocchiaro, and Lunetta Savino would appear together in a comedy that wouldn’t produce something hilarious, but it didn’t. It seems to me that actors like these just really want to work and so they end up in bad movies once in a while.
The book was supposedly (I haven’t read it) a 1976 cult classic and that captures the essence of the “bar sport” in Italy and is still beloved. A “bar sport” technically means “sports bar”, but it couldn’t be any less like a Dave and Busters; it’s more of a coffee bar than a “get hammered and watch NBA games” kind of place. The bar, in Italy, is not quite what it used to be but still an important part of Italian culture. It’s the place near your house or your work where “everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came”. Surely many interesting stories have come from places like these and it must have seemed more amusing in the book, but director Martelli didn’t get it right.
Here’s where (I think) it went wrong:
The talents of Bisio, Battiston, Finocchiaro and Savino were wasted in Martelli’s attempt to bring the quirky characters from Benni’s book alive. Yes, there are probably hundred’s of local bars with oddballs and eccentrics like the ones in Bar Sport, but they are real people, not caricatures, and there are probably a few normal, boring patrons thrown into the mix. Martelli made the little old ladies (played with grey wigs by Finocchiaro and Savino) seem like Statler and Waldorf, the two old men from the muppets, watching the action from their table and cracking jokes, and none of the guys seemed like real people. Too many weak running jokes (the sign that the electrician can’t get to light up,the odd pastry that’s been in the case for 10 years, the sugar in the tea) and not enough story.
And in the end, non-Italians just aren’t going to get the humor the way it’s intended anyway, because there were too many inside jokes. Ironically, that’s what made me watch this flawed movie, because I love Italians and it’s always fun for me to try to get inside their heads. I love hearing their expressions and seeing how they do things, but it’s probably a mistake to assume that anything in Bar Sport had any bearing on reality; Massimo Martelli went over too far over the top and ruined a good story.
Bar Sport – 2011 (no English subtitles)
Director: Massimo Martelli
Writers: Stefano Benni (book), Massimo Martelli (screenplay)
Stars: Claudio Bisio, Giuseppe Battiston and Antonio Catania
I Love Italian Everything 