Maccio Capatonda
Il migliore dei mondi

The fifth film by Maccio Capatonda, whose real name is Marcello Macchia, is The Best of Worlds, his third directorial effort.

After dozens of hilarious trailers, almost all aired on shows by the Gialappa's Band, and the series Mario, his debut film was Italiano Medio in 2015, which included references to previous trailers, including the titular one.

Then came Quel bravo ragazzo by Enrico Lando in 2016; his second directorial work, Omicidio all'italiana, in 2017; and participation in Rapiniamo il Duce by Renato De Maria last year.

The Best of Worlds, directed together with Danilo Carlani and Alessio Dogana, is an explicit homage to Back to the Future, but the more attentive viewers will also notice subtler nods to the Terminator saga and Orwell's 1984.

Ennio Storto is catapulted into a parallel 2023 where technology is stuck in 1999. Thus, we see phone booths, Pentium 2, Modem 56k, and Nokia 310. Demonstrating the homage to Back to the Future is Viola Rossi dressed as Marty McFly, and the Doctor Brown of the situation, however, isn’t Ennio, but Stefano Lavori, an obvious Italianization of Steve Jobs, hiding in a barn in Cupertino, in the province of Lecce, the hometown of Adriano Pappalardo, who I imagined would be in the cast, but isn’t. A contact with Ennio's iPhone will be enough to bring him back to the real 2023, not the parallel one, where Steve Jobs has been gone for 12 years, but his Viola Rossi is still alive.

The film aims to spark a debate: was the world of 1999 really better than the current one, or, defying the rhetoric of "things were better when they were worse," is the world we are living in truly better, if not the best?

PS: Surely the tripe wasn’t better... those who watch the film will understand.

To Maccio and the film, 4 stars, a talent in good form after almost 20 years of activity.