Watch The Monster For Free

Simply Perfect

An Exercise In Nonsense

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Before ascending to his insurmountable zenith with LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997, 8/10), Roberto Benigni's THE MONSTER is a winsome farce about an innocent layabout Loris (Benigni) is wrongly identified as a serial women-slaughterer at large, in order to catch him red-handed, the police force assigns a young policewoman Jessica (Braschi) to go to great lengths to entice him into the irrepressible perpetration (ultimately, a red riding hood costume), therefore, a spate of funny sketches ensure while Loris' resistance is ultra-impenetrable. Benigni is a superb comedian, a do-it-himself practitioner, skilfully concocts lewd yet never graphically offensive sex-related slapstick in this larger-than-life scenario, individually, each skit is authentically rib-tickling, the opening one which causes the false impression for the entire film, is that Loris confuses a middle-age woman Claudia (Pieri Palombi) for a nymphomaniac, and predictably his overt seduction turns into sexual harassment. It is funny no doubt, but a bit too cheesy to be taken seriously since each laughter is arbitrarily calculated, easily anticipated, and provoked by mere happenstance - this is the key tone of the film, all the antics are in your face, but you cannot complain too much since they are well-crafted. However, the wholesomeness of the story fail to survive under the barrage of giggling-inducing escapades, there is no credible rationality in finding the whodunit, the chemistry between Loris and Jessica never reach its threshold of romance, but the husband-wife team makes it up by the synchronous walking-like-midgets loveliness, witnessed by a distinguished resident (Girotti) every time. Rest of the cast is uniformly one-dimensional yet fundamentally enjoyable, Michel Blanc is hysterical as the doctor who is determined to diagnose Loris in person, the segment where he and his pills-chomping wife Joland (Lavanant) visit Loris and Jessica for dinner is the high-water mark for paranoid ridicule. Jean-Claude Brialy is the testy proprietor, Ivano Marescotti is Loris' sole business supplier, Laurent Spielvogel is the livid police chief and Franco Mescolini is his amiable Chinese teacher, perhaps one of them is the culprit? The exaggeration of physical gestures and the Italian style of uninterrupted monologue may not be appealing to all its audience over the world, some minor goofs (e.g. the stalking video camera is ludicrous enough to only capture Loris' escape route while completely oblivious of the chaser, the antique dealer) are to some extent detrimental to the core of the story.On the other hand, one should not nitpick a feel-good comedy, which is the most demanding genre for filmmakers because every culture has its unique language of humor, a true universally appreciated one is like a needle in s haystack, and THE MONSTER is almost there, it is among the very rarefied above-average hierarchy to say the very least.

Good job that Roberto Benigni keeps his humour and melodramatic Italian style. The Chaplin style takes its share too. Continental Europeans are more sensitive to cultural and social changes in their countries. This movie was made in 1994, as the end roller reads. It was not the beginning of the hit of learning Mandarin but the number of learning is increasing. I feel so happy to see that the Chinese words used in the film carry meaning. In the old days, when Asia has not yet been in the spotlight or "internationalism" was not yet the buzzword, in movies, written words of Hindi, Chinese, Korean, Japanese carried no meaning because the western viewers didn't bother to know. Now that people got to know more about Asia, film-makers do reasearch more before they shoot the film. I love modern productions with high cultural awareness.Movie is a good tool to show social, cultural or international changes. In the movie, the Chinese actors though only appeared a few minutes but they had their share like lines, "The candidate is able to write pretty good Chinese.", "Let's give him a question, not very difficult, not very easy." In the past, in most movies, no matter big or small, Asian got no line. Thanks, how I like the change. However, if their names are put in the end roller of this français-italiano production, which posed to be rather international, that would be even better. Interesting that there are more than ten examiners in the exam center. I was completely floored with laughter when I saw that scene. Anyone who has sat for HSK (Mandarin Chinese Proficiency Test) would know that was not true. The exam room in the movie is rather like a Politburo meeting.I like the setting, a new developing district near Roma, Lazio. An interesting movie about a man (a suspect of serial killer: 18 women) looking for a job and so is learning Mandarin, somehow a novel language to the Europeans and living in a new area. New is the word I can think of when I was watching this hilarious movie. Just lots of fun and amusement in low expense (US$1.29 VCD).Superb, bravo, buonissimo, magnifique, zhen peng! What a good discovery of Benigni's older production.

I was on holidays in Italy that year when I watched the advert in TV. Roberto Benigni was walking with his funny way (that uses in the movie to avoid the house owner) to the nearest kiosk and stealing the video cassette of his own movie....il Mostro. After that, I had to watch the movie and I have to admit that it's great! He is one of the few actors that he doesn't make himself look ridiculous in order to make you laugh. He doesn't have that stupid kind of parody-american style. He has a great sense of humor and you can't take away the smile off your face after the movie has finished. He has that nice warm Italian tamperamento and that's why maybe I like him and his movies so much. He is an artist! Enjoy the movie!

What an excellent movie 'Il Mostro' is! It is absolutely certain that it will destroy you from the first moment.Make sure you watch it in Italian audio though. A lot of Benigni's (as of course any other actor's) performance comes out of projecting his lines and Benigni always sounds hilarious.And don't expect to see 'scary movie' here. This is quality comedy, with great script and a genius actor.Don't miss it!9/10