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Rating: "YAWN" [Me, during the movie]
It's painful to witness the artistic decay of your idols, it's a bit like watching a loved one get beaten to death: you feel powerless, the sight is so horrible and terrifying that it inhibits any action. This is exactly what I've been experiencing in recent years, watching the work of what was once one of the most important comedy groups the Beautiful Country has ever seen, Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo.
A few months ago, I wrote a review on Il ricco, il povero e il maggiordomo, venting all my anger and frustration at seeing how my lifelong idols were deteriorating, film after film. But yesterday, I had the chance to see their latest effort, Fuga da Reuma Park. In the last review, I said that, as much as Il ricco, il povero e il maggiordomo was a bad film, nothing could surpass the squalor and embarrassing ugliness of Il cosmo sul comò. Well, now I can say I was wrong: Fuga da Reuma Park is one of the biggest disasters in the history of Italian cinema. And by defining it this way, I'm considering even the masterpieces of ugliness from Massimo Boldi's recent period, the films of Soliti Idioti, Paolo Ruffini and company.
I write this review with immense heartache, a sadness I didn't think was possible to find, with a very deep sense of abandonment and sadness. And now I feel I must say the following: Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo's career must absolutely end here!
Since this is a review, I suppose I must also talk about the film, besides the very unpleasant feelings it provoked in me. So, I'd say let's start with the plot: the comedic trio Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo find themselves, after many years, in a retirement home created inside an amusement park (this is already a terrible starting point, an idea even less than childish) and decide to escape to reach Copa Cabana. The story unfolds through embarrassing gags, far from those strokes of genius that characterized the trio's golden years, such as Aldo stuck in a tiny box (wtf?), a patient of Reuma Park speaking like the radio commentary of "Tutto il calcio minuto per minuto" (wtf??) or the utterly unfunny (except to the trio's eyes, it seems) incursions of Silvana Fallisi playing a Russian nurse (WTF?), like the one seen in the hospital sketch in Ammutta Muddica. Everything is represented with flat, inexpressive cinematography, a completely wrong direction, even in basic notions (like endless crossing of the axis), and acting bordering on amateur: even I, in elementary school plays, provided performances infinitely better than those of the actors in this film.
This film is even worse than Il cosmo sul comò because that one, at least, had some interesting characters (like Dr. Frinzi. Pardon, Gastani Frinzi) and, even in the worst moments, managed to elicit something in the viewer, even if it was anger and disgust. Fuga da Reuma Park generates only boredom, it is a soporific film. It doesn't make you laugh but it doesn’t make you angry either. Which is worse than anything else, because it transmits nothing. My only reaction during the viewing of this film is the one I reported at the top of the review: yawn. Never in my life have I found myself yawning, bored to death, during a film by Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo.
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