牙签乔尼

After Dante (Benigni), an ordinary school bus driver returning from his extraordinary adventure in Palermo, his takeaway is that people there is dead serious about lawfulness, as he can personally vouch that filching a banana can incite vehement public censure. The joke is broad but also smart and trenchant levering at the Mafia-ridden Sicily region. In Benigni’s JOHNNY STECCHINO, the snow job is never debunked for a simpleton like Dante, and as a comedy filmmaker, Benigni’s brilliant acumen is to tap into audience’s explicit knowingness and elicit ample lulz at the expense of our protagonist’s bewilderedness. Au fond, JOHNNY STECCHINO (“stecchino” means toothpick) is a ringer comedy, Dante is chosen by the gracious Maria (Braschi) for his uncanny resemblance of the latter’s criminal husband, the titular Johnny (also played by Benigni for sure, putting on a straight face and ramping up the volumes of obnoxiousness), who is a murderer and fink in hiding, wanted by the local mafia boss Cozzamara (Pappalardo). The couple’s masterplan is to ensure everyone that Dante is Johnny, so after Dante is rubbed out by Cozzamara, they can start life anew in somewhere else. While Dante is too gormless to deliver him from the jeopardy he is unwittingly enmeshed into, the game changer falls upon Maria, as per usual, Braschi, Ms. Benigni, is put on a pedestal as a sensuous, but way-out-of-the-league woman here, Maria’s change-of-heart is brought off with a more schematic but subtle inflection. Moreover, Braschi’s self-possessed demeanor and sometimes kooky behavior together efficaciously counterpoises Benigni’s buffoonish effusion and self-effacing alacrity, they create a more coruscating chemistry here than in their other collaborations, the consummate LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997) included. Among the supporting cast, making a big splash is Bonacelli’s goofy, cocaine-tooting lawyer, having a ball with pertinent comedic bent, even when he unwisely invites hostages to fortune. As a massively popular Italian comedy, its appeal is universal and disarming. It can be bawdy, certain plot devices are ill-sorted (the disability-feigning gimmick is stiltedly thrown into the third act, for example), and it leaves a faintly bitter taste when it ends with an insensitive jest on a Down’s syndrome kid. But Benigni is down-to-earth and innocuous enough to get away with that demerit, for most of its time, JOHNNY STECCHINO doesn’t let hubris and vulgar get into its merrymaking head. referential entries: Benigni’s THE MONSTER (1994, 6.8/10), LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997, 8.4/10).