Io, loro e Lara

Like his contemporaries Lino Banfi and Adriano Celantano, we see too little of the work of Italian comic Carlo Verdone, in English language distribution.

Here he is playing the Catholic missionary back from Africa where the physical hardships had worn him down, to be confronted with his family scrambling after dad marries a Balkan carer blonde and starts dissipating the inheritance, to the alarm of shrink sister Bonaiuto and coke sniffer brother Giallini. Complications ensue in the form of the blonde's sexy but tense daughter Chiatti.

Add in plot elements like the three African girls or Chiatti's video sex work, which assert while others, like the intimidating bishop, drop out, to make the thing harder to predict but the structure is classic farce, building to the fake family diner with social worker Finocchiaro.

They do have difficulty making the carefully structured plot hold attention beyond this but the outcome is agreeable and the playing and film making superior.