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Rating: Honestly, I was surprised that Guzzanti was making a film about the story of "Fascists on Mars", an idea already presented to the public in the show "Il Caso Scafroglia," which aired some years ago on the third channel (with an almost clandestine schedule; always in outrageous delay).
The TV show had moments of truly violent and intelligent satire, though suffering a bit from repetition. The most annoying part, in my opinion, was precisely the rehash, evidently to fill time, of the jingle "Fascists on Marssss" etc. etc. but so it goes! The good Guzzanti decided to make an extended version of the story of the ridiculous officer Barbagli and his mission to colonize the planet Mars.
The film begins in pure 1940s newsreel style (a setup somewhat akin to Woody Allen's "Zelig" for crossover), narrating a top-secret mission of the Italian fascist regime. A small group of soldiers is sent with a ramshackle spacecraft to colonize the red Mars and restore it to the Black of righteousness and modern progress. On the planet, the fascists won't hesitate to declare war on non-existent enemies, only to be delightfully ridiculed when a super-evolved civilization arrives to make friends.
There's no doubt that such a fantastical theme offers endless opportunities to squeeze out satirical jokes, with consequent reflections on the propaganda mechanisms of fascists of any era; and it's indeed this evergreen omnipresence of rhetoric and populist propaganda that is the central theme and the comic (tragic...) target of the film. So the trumpets sound off, with the ridiculous language of fascist newsreels, the exhausting appeal to senseless national pride, the continuous creation of acronyms and institutions for every ridiculous activity... in short, a big stew of satire in fantasy sauce.
Worth remembering is a moment in early Allen style, with a giant head of Mussolini chasing Barbagli in a dream, perhaps a nod to the giant breast in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About...".
I also appreciated the film's ending, in which what's left of the 1940s fascist adventure comes into contact with the super-technology of the new millennium. A striking, ironic, well-crafted scene that encapsulates the film's overall message: 'Populism and imperialist-colonialism will always exist, not just in the boot-shaped peninsula.'
The overall feeling is a film that attempts to achieve an ambitious goal even with the weapon of fun and irony... a goal unfortunately missed. The jokes are not always convincing, and the targets of the jokes are chosen too randomly. The irony is fired a bit at random; sometimes at the clichés of the old regime (the military parades that would circle the palace to appear numerous), or modern propaganda ("let's build a bridge!"), or on specific issues ("... and they left him to recount the ballots...") and so on.
As if the screenplay were a collage of ideas, rather than an organic narrative work. So, there's no story generating empathy with the explorers' adventures. With these shortcomings, boredom is just around the corner and begins to hover menacingly during the second part of the film.
A film to watch out of curiosity and entertainment, without expecting the staggering genius we are used to from Guzzanti the Comedian.
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