Rating: 
Summary: The best movie I've ever seen!
Review: This is absolutely the best movie I've ever seen. I saw it twice in the theaters and after I saw it I started learning Italian. It's a beautiful language, and you don't even mind hearing it throughout the movie. As soon as the first word appears on the screen, you forget that you're reading subtitles, even if you are a slow reader. It's perfect for anyone looking for a favorite movie. It's definitly mine.
Rating:
Summary: It was funny and sad, I loved it!
Review: It is one of the best movie I've ever seen, and I've seen some preatty good movies such as T2 and Saving Private Ryan. It was really funny how the father pretended being in a concatraion camp was a game so his son would know Life is Beutiful.
Rating:
Summary: Excellently written, funny, and sad at the same time!
Review: This movie portrays the war in a comic way, to prevent a young boy to realize what's going on. The reality is so true, it is almost a tear-jerker, save for the comedy of Roberto Benigni. This is possibly the number-one movie of all time.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointed.
Review: My girlfriend and I went to see this last night. She thought it was the most moving film she'd seen in years. I was hardly moved at all. Best Actor? A one note performance as far as I could see. Constantly manic, ignoring rather than reacting to what was going on around him. Very few nuances suggesting what his character must have *really* been feeling in the camp. There was only one scene where he managed to do this, and it was well put over. This was where he finally realised that Horst Buchholz was not going to help him. The mask disappeared briefly. Excellent scene. I suppose you have to like Guido in the first place to be moved by him. I thought he was a shallow and selfish jerk. Maybe that's where the film and I parted company. I never cared that much about him because of that. It's seems to me that this film was less about the triumph of the human spirit, and more about extolling the virtues of self-delusion. This runs counter to my philosophy of life (too much of this in the world) and is yet another reason for my dislike of this film. Contrary to what my girlfriend jokingly said of me after she heard my reaction to the film, I *do* have soul <g> and am quite easily moved by a good movie. This one left me cold...
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, funny, touching movie
Review: Roberto Bengnini deserves every honor. This movie touched me unlike any other in a very long time. Hysterically funny, sad. I just can not describe it. For those of you who don't care for foreign films and subtitles, this is one movie that may change your mind.
Rating:
Summary: What a man will do to protect his child's innocense. BENE!
Review: A true comic, Roberto is Chaplin alone, or Abbott & Costello when teamed up. Sight gags and beautiful score are a must. That violence is downplayed is at once artful and appealing in its handling of violence. MUST SEE for thinking human beings.
Rating:
Summary: Grazie Roberto. Grazie Italia
Review: It's not the best picture ever made but it does have a soul. It's not a movie about the Holocaust, it could have been about a man with a terminal desease and it would have achieved the same, wonderful result.
Rating:
Summary: The truth of joy's consistency with the truth of horror
Review: Let me just start by saying that normally I'm the last person who would ever fill out one of these things. Secondly, I normally see a movie twice at most, three or four times if it's truly exquisite. I saw "Life is Beautiful" 14 times. Steven Spielberg et al have unmitigated gall to castigate this movie for not being realistic enough when every Holocaust survivor whose opinion I've read has praised it. Neither the title nor the point of this film is "Concentration Camps are Beautiful," or "Concentration Camps are Funny," or anything of the sort. The point is that love and beauty and humor can, and do, stay intact even in the dankest depths of the human experience. To say that this movie makes light of the Holocaust is ridiculous in that such a beacon of joy and love in the person of Benigni's character was flicked off, horrifically, indiscriminately, without even a shadow of tribute it deserved. The single tree of his death reflected the Black Forest of the Holocaust in the same way that his legacy, carried on in his son and wife, represents the spirit of Holocaust survivors and their families. The fact that such an artist and scholar of the Holocaust as Spielberg couldn't grasp this concept greatly disappoints me. The only legitimate philosophical quibble with this movie would derive from the viewpoint that the joy of the human spirit cannot rise above its horrors. Not a view I agree with, but a case could be made for that thesis. In short, this movie captures both the horrors and the triumphs of the human experience better than anything else I've ever seen. Viewers who are so short-sighted as to call it unrealistic need some serious development in their abstract thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Carpe Diem!
Review: La vita e bella is a movie with impecable content. In a world that is often controlled by hatred, lust, and jealosy, it isn't often that a movie bypasses all of life's troubles and focuses on what really matters. Roberto Benigni demonstrates the love that every father, and mother as well, should have for their children. He also teaches us that nomatter how many dead fish you find on your doorstep, you can always jump over them and keep smiling. I think if nothing else, everyone should have to see this movie to know what true love is all about. True love is giving all of oneself to the one you love. So, carpe diem and love unconditionally.
Rating:
Summary: Why can't we do great movies like this?
Review: I saw this movie in the theaters and thought it was absolutely the best movie I had ever seen. It is so touching. I wanted to just give Roberto Benigni a big hug for making this film. He seems like such a fun person. How could anyone not like this movie? I read that some people thought it was ridiculous to make the Holocaust seem like a game. Well, what would you have done in the situation. "Well, son, sorry but this is not gonna have a happy ending. You probably won't live through this, so get ready for death." I think not. Oh, and for those of you who might think that the subtitles will bother you, they won't. Trust me, you'll forget that you even had to read them. If you want a movie that will make you laugh, cry, and laugh until you cry, this is the best choice out there. Europeans have a way of communicating the horror of something like the Holocaust without showing any violence. Hollywood has some crazy idea that if it doesn't have sex or violence in it, it isn't a real movie. Maybe some day they'll wake up and smell the coffee and start making movies like this.
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