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100A deeply moving blend of cold terror and rapturous hilarity. Lovingly crafted by Italy's top comedian and most popular filmmaker, it's that rare comedy that takes on a daring and ambitious subject and proves worthy of it.
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100One of the greatest films about the civilian experience of war ever made anywhere.
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100Benigni, with great help from young Cantarini, has crafted a work of such complexity that you may find both your brain and your heart simply overloaded. Which, of course, is the rarely achieved goal of all art.
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90Its unique message about laughing in the face of evil clearly reveals that life is beautiful.
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88Finds the right notes to negotiate its delicate subject matter.
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88A rare blend of comedy and tenderness whose point is not the horrors of war but the lengths a parent will go to protect his child's innocence.
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88To see someone even attempt bittersweet treatment of this subject is surprising, but to largely pull it off is a major feat.
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The concept is not so much nihilistic as it is realistic, and the fact that Benigni has made such fine distinctions so powerfully clear is amazing and moving.
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If, like Benigni, you were born after World War II, it reassures us that he hasn't forgotten the innate seriousness of his subject matter, and that despite its grimness, he still thinks life is beautiful.
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80It's a high-wire act without a net, and Benigni pulls it off with astounding grace and sensitivity.
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80Benigni effectively creates a situation in which comedy is courage. And he draws from this an unpretentious, enormously likable film that plays with history both seriously and mischievously. Piety has no place here, nor do tears until the final reel. Life is Beautiful plays by its own rules
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80In one bold stride, Benigni has set himself apart from the rank and file of funnymen, joining the elite class of clowns who know that humor and heartbreak are only a howl of pain apart.
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75Succeeds better than it ought to, largely because of the personality and prodigious talents of its director and star, the Italian comedian Roberto Benigni.
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75It's the depiction of the love and sacrifice of a father for a son that makes Life is Beautiful worthwhile.
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75Ultimately, Benigni's comic refinery merely transforms the banality of evil into a lesser sin -- the evil of banality.
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70While most reviewers will accuse it of sentimentality (a charge that is justified), audiences, who don't feel the need to appear rigorous and tough-minded all the time, will flock to it in droves.
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70The story moves beyond the limitations of its setting, transforming itself into an affecting parable about the lengths to which parents will go to protect their children from trauma, cruelty and knowledge of evil.
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70Sluggish, uneven and lacking in rhythm, it nonetheless has enough pathos and winning humor.
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70While it celebrates the triumph of humor, invention and the human spirit, Life Is Beautiful is not the transporting experience it might have been. Benigni knows how to make us laugh, but he has not yet figured out how to make us cry.
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67Manages to incorporate all these things into a moving yet unsentimental story about the beauty of maintaining one's wits while stumbling blindly in the insane no man's land that lies beyond wit's end.
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67Starts out as sentimental whimsy and ends as sentimental kitsch.
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60Has one of the most stupendously tasteless premises in cinema history, and much of the time when this movie tries to beckon a smile, the effect is closer to astonished nausea.
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60While it's futile to pretend that Life Is Beautiful completely triumphs--it's simply too tough a concept to sustain--what is surprising about this unlikely film is that it succeeds as well as it does.
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50Has good intentions, but its exaggerated celebration of quick-witted improvisation ultimately trivializes the human and historical horrors evoked by the story.
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50Benigni sets out to do the impossible.
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50Benigni wants to tell a poignant fable rooted in the love between a father and son, but everything hinges on whether one finds his gags inspired or tasteless. Humor can only save some of us.
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50Life Is Beautiful is funny (kinda) and even tasteful (sorta). But in its fantasy of divine grace, it is also nonsense.
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30The director gives us not just a pop Holocaust but a prettified, palatable Holocaust.
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20In this climate, turning even a small corner of this century's central horror into feel-good popular entertainment is abhorrent.
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20The indifference of the proceedings and the hero's slapstick behavior to the everyday realities of the camps borders on the nauseating.