Posted by sean at 170.148.10.46 on January 03, 2003 at 14:44:59:
In Reply to: I hate Roberto Benigni posted by Barry, Suave MF on January 02, 2003 at 19:44:36:
: Just seeing a grown man act so foolishly like that is sad. And certain foreign humor I'm not into either. Put the 2 together & I REALLY don't like him.
... just 'cause of people I trust who saw dailies and such ... but 'Johnny Stecchino' is a *great* comedy [there is *no* American comedy, ever, that would suggest, as Benigni does, that its lead character is going to accidentally give a retarded person cocaine]. I understand why people don't like 'Life is Beautiful', but I think it's fantastic. (I hate it when a movie gets so universally over-praised that people backlash against it and see it even though they hate those kinds of movies, and then complain about it, to the point where the movie becomes completely bi-polar, with, on the one hand, people saying absurd things like "greatest foreign film ever" and, on the other, people saying absurd things like "why do people like this sentimental garbage?"; it's just what it is, but I think what it does, it does well ... maybe just because I saw it after the backlash had already been in effect for a while, and because I didn't expect to like it.)
: I did hear the unaltered original version is way better than the Americanized one. In the Americanized one, they have Breckin Myer dub Benigni's voice. *shivers*
I hadn't heard anything good about either of them, but it stands to reason that Benigni is going to play a better Benigni than anybody else. Still, the American one has an interesting cast (which is a pretty stupid thing to do in a dubbed movie, since I, for one, would be distracted the whole time trying to spot the voice talent).