borman-1 Reviews

Operazione San Pietro (1967)

Not bad at all

[7/10 · 6 March 2007]

Operazione San Pietro is an OK eurocomedy. It's not one of Lucio Fulci's best comedies (his other movies featuring Lando Buzzanca - The Eroticist, Young Dracula - are funnier), but it's still watchable and entertaining. It's not a real ripoff of Dino Risi's film, as an other reviewer mentioned (though I haven't seen Operazione San Gennaro), since it was made (written, produced etc.) by the same people, and - as far as I know - the story and the characters are very different too (Fulci's film is not a real "heist" or "caper" movie). The Italian title implies that it's a sequel, and it does feature similar situations, but 1. that's not stealing in my opinion 2. it is very common in case of movies like this. It seems to be true that Operazione San Pietro is actually a "semi-sequel" to Heinz Rühmann's Father Brown movies, at least the German title (Die Abenteuer des Kardinal Braun) suggests that.

The acting is OK (Robinson is quite good in a parody of his earlier roles), the characters are funny, the direction is stylish (though not as stylish as Fulci's giallos or westerns).

The car stunts are similar to the ones in Louis de Funes' Gendarme movies, which is quite interesting, since the Funes movie which features almost the same stunts (Le Gendarme se marie) was released a year after Operazione San Pietro. (So if anybody is a "thief" among these people, it must be Jean Girault, the director of the Gendarme movies.) All in all, if you like European (italian) comedies, give this one a try. It's not a gory movie at all, but it's still a Fulci-film with Fulci's stylistics (and it's a lot better and stylish than some horrors he made in the eighties).

(John Bartha appears uncredited as the "talkative" one of the thugs who beat up Robinson.)

Pizzás (2001)

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!

[1/10 · 20 January 2005]

This is one of the few movies I couldn't watch for more than 30 minutes. Not because it's gross, violent or something like that. It's just plain BAD! And when I say bad, I mean ANNOYINGLY bad! I like bad movies: Ed Wood movies (very entertaining), Lucio Fulci movies (visually great, otherwise trash), etc. But the makers of this movie wanted it look like a big-budget American movie and the result is laughable! For example: the "car chase" at the beginning. The cars were SLOW! The editor could have helped with some close shots of the wheels, or something like that, but nobody cared! Two slow cars race each other and the audience should feel like they were watching "Bullitt" or "The French Connection" at least! The "star" of the movie has no acting talent at all, but the bigger problem is that he has no charisma as well. He's just a weird looking, annoying guy, who makes Freddie Prinze, jr. look like Marlon Brando! The makers also wanted to fill the dialogues with one-liners and "language-jokes", which are hard or impossible to translate. And the result is shameful as well.

But the biggest problem with the movie is that it's generally not credible. The tone is fake (as hungarians say: "mumajer"). The makers are not dumb or without talent (some kind of limited talent, mainly in music video-making and commercials), but they want their product to look really COOL. They fail.

I used to think that "Magyar Vándor" was bad. I've changed my mind: that "Monty Python and The Holy Grail"-ripoff was a carefully made art-comedy compared to this sh*t!