Gabriele Salvatores
Il ragazzo invisibile

And here's finally the first big disappointment of early 2015.
One of those movies that will enter my subconscious under the category "small traumas suffered and hard to remove".
This "The Invisible Boy" by Gabriele Salvatores, seen 2 days ago at the cinema, is one of those experiences that immediately makes you think of the list of alternative things you could have done with the 27 spent (for three) on this lousy little movie: 2 pizzas and beers at a pizzeria, a good book, a double evergreen CD, a latex sex-toy etc.
A film that started well with "intentions" but then ruined in the second half.
The first part was fairly smooth... the classic kid avoided by everyone, more or less acceptable psychological aspects, the bittersweet taste of provincial life, the disorientation of pre-adolescence and blah blah... in short, I was hoping for an "Italian way" to the superhero myth: without special effects but with more attention to psychological introversion.
And I thought that already this, by itself, would have been "brilliant" as an idea.
But right from the start, you could notice the AWFUL acting of the young actors: expressionless, fake, it seemed like a script read and not acted.
Then came the real actors, the adults: Golino (with her usual mono-expressive face) and the over-the-top Bentivoglio (the only one worth saving).
From the second half onwards, the disaster: Salvatores tries to recover his "American part" and stuffs the movie with thriller components, villains against Humanity (AGAIN?!?), secretive adoptive children, action, explosions... in short, a mishmash of genres and "action movie" made with little money, with embarrassing narrative holes and scenes stitched together with imaginative effort and lack of results.
What a pity.
The film started well... then the desire to emulate the American "Marvel-like" cinema took over and ruined everything, giving us a dull, banal and poorly made film (as he did 20 years ago with "Nirvana", do you remember?). Now someone explain to Gabriele that you can't have a wedding with dried figs and that big spectacular movies with special effects should be left to the Americans who have always beaten us 10 to 1 in this.