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Why so much hype?

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

First a word of warning to Italian readers: "Africa begins south of Rome", goes an Old Italian saying – this is filmed in the borderland. So, the proud descendants of the Roman culture that they are, they won't like everything about this review.Rome: ancient cradle of European civilization, which gave us democracy and the alphabet. Rome: modern, buzzing metropolis, city of culture, style and fashion. In Ettore Scolas film we only get to see glimpses of those Romes, which loom far, far in the distance. Scolas Rome is the rotten tooth of a city that once was the heart of an empire. A corpse, so degenerated that only sheer tenacity and stubbornness keeps it alive.This film could have been shot in any slum in this world, be it in Rio de Janeiro, the trailer-towns of the Midwestern US or one of the gypsy encampments of Eastern Europe. But such an utterly black, cynical comedy like "Brutti, Sporchi e Cattvi" could probably only have been produced in Italy.In one dilapidated hut lives the Mazzatella clan: a sheer countless number of relatives, each poor, unemployed, unemployable and rotten to the very core. "Proud" head of the family is Giacinto (Nino Manfredi) who has one worry in the world: that his relatives would steal the million lire insurance money which he "earned" by loosing his left eye in a quicklime accident (we don't know how much a million lire was worth back then, but we presume at least a few hundred bucks).When Giacinto picks up corpulent drifter Iside, bringing her home into the family-bed, his clan decides to take more drastic measures, flavoring his macaroni with rat-poison. However, the one-eyed patriarch survives (with the aid of saltwater and a bicycle-pump) and shows his relations, who's on top of the familial food-chain.Director Scola wasn't lying when he promised to show us "the dirty, the ugly and the mean"; three terms which not only define Giacinto, his family and the squalor in which they gleefully live. At the same time, he shows us humans with whom we can instinctively relate to, not mere caricatures of the poor or corrupt. Scolas film is powerful, even important: it makes us laugh and at the same time, makes us wonder what we're laughing at.In that sense, films like Emir Kusturicas "Black Cat, White Cat" or Michael Raeburns "Triompf" probably own more to Scola than the average viewer might have realized.9/10

Nino Manfredi, only professional actor here, shines in this Ettore Scola movie as Giacinto Mazzarella, a former convict with a long series of crimes and a huge, quirky family. He's violent, vulgar, amoral; he lives surrounded by dirt, squalor and poverty. Yet, he's funny. This movie is too funny! Scola directs a group of actors headed by Manfredi, who shows off an irresistible accent, and by Maria Luisa Santella as Iside, Giacinto's mistress, a fat, sweet but silly woman with an "ancient name". But it isn't a carefree comedy: behind the quips and the jokes there's a grotesque depiction of a miserable reality not very far from San Pietro, the most important Catholic building in the world. Not a perfect film, but a very good one.

Just a great film! I think that "Ugly, Dirty an Bad" has more quality than many "Hollywood-made-to-win-Oscars" films. Let's forget by now the humor side of the film; the content brought to the viewer shows as those kind of people try to survive day by day in extreme poverty and illness. Much more than a film to make people laugh, it's a documentary and a "finger-in-wound" in nowadays issues. I hope people after see that movie just don't remember the funniest scenes, but also the human side of the whole story pictured in there. Remember, everywhere we go, even if all around seems to be nice and beauty, somewhere, if we look carefully, we can discover "dark spots"... Recently in an opinion article about another film, in the heading section we could read "[...] Mary, satiated of removing thorns from the rose flowers in local factory [...]" That's the point: there's no roses without thorns! And if you see a rose without them, it's because someone had remove it before...

This is an extraordinary film. A pitiless portrait of human race. Scola describes the life of poor and marginal people with no compassion, showing all their miseries and perfidies. In this sense, the film is very close to another masterpiece, Viridiana from Bunuel. Everything in this movie is so disconcerting (beginning with the slum which has a magnificent vista to St. Peter's Cathedral) that it also remembers me of David Lynch's works. Besides all that, the film is absolutely hilarious.