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| LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1998) - PG-13
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ReviewScore: 60 out of 100
SBD Star Rating:
by Lew Irwin
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Receiving by far the best reviews is the movie that is receiving the least promotion, Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful. A comedy dealing with the holocaust, it brings to mind the recent controversy over the TV sitcom, The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, lambasted for allegedly making light of slavery. Indeed, Janet Maslin in the New York Times comments that the film is "as likely to offend those who haven't seen it as to beguile those who have." "Holocaust humor isn't a booming industry," writes Thelma Adams in the New York Post. "One false joke can sink an entire production." But Benigni, she writes, successfully makes "the case for humor's power to overcome the most impossible of obstacles." "To see someone even attempt bittersweet treatment of this subject is surprising," writes Mike Clark in USA Today, "but to largely pull it off is a major feat." Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News observes, "This is a movie unlike any other this reviewer has ever seen, a transcendent work that indelibly shows how the human spirit, using humor and imagination, can overcome anything." |
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