I Love Italian Everything

Benvenuti al Sud,  one of the best Italian comedies in the past ten years demanded a sequel, whether or not it was a good idea.

WATCH BENVENUTI AL NORD ON YOUTUBE!

It made a lot of money, 30 million euro, and it was everything a good comedy should be; it’s smart, the acting is top-notch, and it’s funny. Shockingly funny, actually, considering the way so many comedies defy the definition of the word “funny”. The thing I liked best about it: it’s inspirational. Benvenuti al Sud is a story with a universal message – don’t judge people you don’t know, and it’s done it a simple, funny, and perfect way.

As in the US where we have regional differences that produce stereotypes and competition, Italy has the ongoing clash between its north and south. There’s no Mason-Dixon line to define boundaries of the culture war in Italy; some people think of Rome as the dividing line and some would place it much farther north. There are political parties that would actually like to make Italy two separate countries.

It didn’t take a genius to see a sequel coming. I looked forward to a sequel and yet I figured they’s screw it up.

It’s pretty screwed up. And it feels like director Luca Miniero had some kind of identity crisis at least a couple of times in the movie; the beginning was insultingly cliché, I was laughing in the middle, but in the end it was predictable and benign.

The whole point of the original was lost.  I liked how in Benvenuti al Sud Miniero didn’t try to make southern Italians seem like adorable, too good to be true charactertures with hearts of gold nor did he vilify the north and that he made everybody real people. He showed the differences between northerners and southerners without making one seem better than the other and without exaggeration.

Benvenuti al Nord depends on stereotypes and clichés to get laughs instead of working to diffuse them. The only redeeming part came when the southernesr came north to Milan and thought that what they found there was the result of people playing a trick on them. They saw people picking up after their dogs, women cab drivers, and people riding  scooters and bicycles with helmets were certain that it was a joke that the whole city was in on.

Starring Claudio Bisio, Alessandro Siani , Angela Finocchiaro and Valentina Lodovini, it’s a huge disappointment rather than a total waste of time. In the closing credits Bisio and Siani are looking at a script entitled “Benvenuti al Est”, and I can only hope that’s a joke and not a coming attraction.

You’ll need a region free or European DVD player for this one, but it does have English subtitles.