This movie had us in stitches for the first half, and I thought, briefly, that it could possibly even aspire to be in the same league as Dino Risi's "Il Sorpasso", the greatest Italian road movie (and much more) of all time. Diego Abatantuono showed many of the qualities of Vittorio Gassman when the latter played the role of "Bruno" in the Risi film, and Silvio Orlando played the Trintignant character to very good effect(allowing for the obvious shifts in social class). But the film sputtered as soon as Valentina Cervi (daughter to Abatantuono's character) was brought back into the story (a forcibly re-introduced pretty face--as if an Italian audience can't make it through a movie without a beautiful female on the screen half of the time--or maybe she was brought back to counterbalance the "gay" theme that had been introduced). Before Cervi's reappearance there had been real magic in the interaction between Abatantuono and Orlando.
Review of Children of Hannibal
