FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

lasttimeisaw MY FRIENDS is originally a project for Italian writer/director Pietro Germi, whose untimely death in 1974 at the age of 60, leaves the film to be taken over by another maestro of the Commedia all'Italiana, Mario Monicelli. The film was a whopping box-office success, which subsequently would spawn two sequels, Monicelli would be back in the saddle with ALL MY FRIENDS PART 2 (1982) and ALL MY FRIENDS PART 3 (1985) would be outsourced to Nanni Loy. A double-bill of these two Monicelli's vehicles, set in Florence, MY FRIENDS has a quartet core of middle-aged men: Count Lello Mascetti (Tognhzzi), a down-and-out ex-nobleman who has squandered all his fortunes, can only slum it in a tiny basement with his suicide-driven wife Alice (Vukotic) and their daughter, which doesn't dissuade him from being smitten with an underage student Titti (Dionisio), who has a predilection for girls over men; the second one is Giorgio Perozzi (Noiret), a journalist separated from his wife Laura (Goodwin) and is irreconcilably at adds with his prim adult son; then there is Rambaldo Melandri (Moschin), a bachelor architect, determined to find his perfect half and lastly is Guido Necchi (Del Prete), married with Carmen (Tamantini) and they own a bar which serves as their haunt. Life is anything but optimistic, Pietro Germi and co.'s script conscientiously draws the milieu from reality, in both Mascetti and Perozzi's cases, one might easily finds company in distress and self- abandonment, but, not these four, feeding on their staunch friendship, the fold never relinquish their idiosyncratic practical jokes and escapades, mostly ingenious and borderline harmless, counting their classic passengers-slapping when a train departs and Mascetti's trademark "supercazzola" gibberish. And following Melandri's tireless pursuit of a married woman, Donatella (Karlatos), an embodiment of Madonna with psychological hiccups, a fifth member, Professor Sassaroli (Celi) is introduced, a renowned surgeon and the husband of Donatella, who is perversely liberal about the affair and is more than happy to not stand in their way if they are really made for each other, and of course, they are not, but Sassaroli is here to stay. One of their most detailed skits involves a penny-pinching pensioner Righi (Blier), who is hustled into believing that the quartet belongs to a mafia mob, with Sassaroli as their boss, dangled by the profitable income, Righi buckles down to join in their "dangerous" line-of-work, and their adventure culminates in a self-organized gangster melee, which leaves Righi in chagrin, utterly side-splitting thanks to Blier's bang-up po-faced bearing. The coda of MY FRIENDS deflects to a more sombre streak - a heart attack does Peruzzi in, all happens in a sudden but no grim sorrow is allowed to percolate, his friends keep their comic esprit de corps alive, even death cannot take it away. ALL MY FRIENDS PART 2 comes 7 years later, the story continues after Peruzzi's abrupt departure, the original cast returns (significantly older) except Del Prete, who is replaced by a more prosaic- looking Renzo Montagnani as Necchi, only the latter is not endowed with Del Prete's dashing and devil-may-care panache. The part 2 doesn't structurally pigeonhole itself as a strict sequel, owing to the huge pull of Noiret's Perozzi, there are abundant flashbacks charting Perozzi and Mascetti's past stories, which take place earlier than those in the first one, while without ghettoizing Sassaroli out of the picture (the original four becomes a quintet), it conspicuously creates some anachronism for viewers with fresh memory of the first installment. Gallantly interpolating the flood of Arno in 1966, the story manages to expound on Perozzi's marriage disintegration and take a taunting spin on Melandri's another devoted courtship to a voluptuous but God-fearing young girl Noemi (Giordano).Contriving an act of pulling Pisa tower back in perpendicular, gate-crushing a singing contest with a risqué song a cappella in the presence of cardinals, a chirpy caper involving a Spanish contortionist (Da Silva), their shticks never disappoint, meanwhile Mascetti has his own familial problem when his slow-witted daughter is impregnated by an unknown rapist and decides to become an unwed mother. Finally, a guest performance from Paolo Stoppa as Savino, a Shylock to whom Mascetti is indebted, he would fall prey into the quartet's pranks (includes a scatological one which sublimely tips the scale), and undergo several "invisible" operations to square off Mascetti's debts. Similarly, another heart attack befalls on one of the main characters near the finish, but this time, to a lesser extent, Tognazzi, Moschin, Noiret and Celi are all sterling comedians, but it is Tognazzi who stands out in his more sympathetic nobleman-in-distress mould. Inscribing their marks as quintessential pieces of Commedia all'Italiana, both films are salacious, amoral and pathologically funny, although the second one only logically contends to take a leaf from its predecessor's book. But essentially they are not connived as far-fetched escapist fares with a shamelessly patronizing smugness, their gypsyish antics are genuinely devised to imbue a positive vibe out of their quotidian misfortunes, despite that they can never hit the right note of the gender politics, yet, what do you expect from a buddy movie?

mic-hell Look. If you're not Italian, or at least you don't speak Italian and you see a translated version, probably you won't get it. I don't know how the various pranks like the "supercazzola" have been translated and how they sound like. Here they sound like pure genius. I know a lot of people, scattered through the nation, that just WORSHIP this film, probably thanks to the fact that this movie is quite an underdog, neither a mainstream film, nor an artistically praised "commedia all'italiana". But who cares about artistical merits. The characters and the situations are so lively like is rarely seen. The film is an humble tale about life, women, friendship and death, with five men using their wits to avoid the tragedies of their lives. It's a lesson about taking life with a light heart, even if things are terribly grim. I think that the final laugh means it's all about that.PS Excuse me for the bad English. I'm Italian and i'm supposed to do a lot of errors!

overfedcinemafan This is a terrific film and probably one of the sweetest, funniest comedies ever made. The fearsome foursome never miss an opportunity to make a total mess of established society, all in the name of a good time. Nothing is sacred and anyone can become an instant, impromptu victim or their pranks. The scene at the train station is by far my favourite, and just the thought of the old guys lining up to slap people straight in the face makes me want to laugh out loud. See this film wherever you can, it's heartwarming and hilarious.If only it were more accessible so that younger generations could enjoy this!

Gerald A. DeLuca At several points during the superb Italian comedy MY FRIENDS, the four friends, all overgrown adult children, pull pranks as though they were college dorm buddies rather than the middle-aged fools they are, chant a sort of barber-shop version of the quartet "Bella figlia dell'amore" from Verdi's "Rigoletto."We hear them sing while riding in a car on one of their frequent gypsy-trips to nowhere in particular. Wherever they go they bring mayhem with them. Their lunacy is both a reaction to and a comment on the lunatic world they see around them. The operatic clown Rigoletto was a sad fool too, and this quartet of sad fools elicits both our laughter and our pity. The film was directed by Mario Monicelli from a script by Pietro Germi, creator of some of Italy's best comedy-satires like SEDUCED AND ABANDONED and DIVORCE, ITALIAN STYLE.There is Mascetti (Ugo Tognazzi), a former count who has squandered his own and his wife's inheritance. He now sells encyclopedias, is soon fired from that job, and treats his long-suffering wife and child as excess baggage, shipping them off to her relatives, so he can be alone with his crackpot cronies. He also pursues a lame-brained little lush called Titti even after her colonel-father almost kills him with a shotgun and after discovering her in a lesbian attachment.There is Necchi (Duilio Del Prete), a horny cafe' owner, who while atop his wife tells her to hurry so he can get out with the guys and have some real fun. Male camaraderie means more to these people than heterosexual love and implies an ambivalent latent homosexuality.We see Melandri (Gastone Moschin),a lovesick cop who is eager to possess Olga Karlatos, the neurotic wife of a gifted surgeon (Adolfo Celi). The doctor oddly consents to turn over his wife to him, provided Melandri accepts two small daughters, a German governess, and a two-ton St.Bernard. No way. Erotic love has its limits. He quickly returns to the boys in a state of exhaustion.Then there is Perozzi (Philippe Noiret), the narrator, whose death ends the film. He lives with a humorless son who does not approve of the father's childish pranks, such as pretending to be a hunchback to ward off an unwanted woman. Perozzi is also estranged from a wife who loathes him. She is unable to express pity at his death. "What was he? Nothing." she says. Yet we know it to be that kind of "nothing" that is a challenge by a sad fool to the smug complacency of his son who is a person that faces life as though it were a death sentence. Whatever these clowns are, at least they are alive! In the hierarchy of fool-dom the son appears as loathsome while his father commands some admiration.Some of the episodes in the film are comedy of the first magnitude. Pietro Germi,who wrote the screenplay, had to withdraw from directing the film after a serious illness. He later died. Mario Monicelli, a notable directorial talent in his own right, took over the film and imparts to it a winsome ribald flavor you have to savor to appreciate.There is one episode in which the four, with the addition of sometime-member Celi, the doctor, enter a small town with maps and surveying equipment and convince the townspeople and a bewildered priest that the village must be leveled to make way for a new highway. In a truly hilarious episode we watch the group slapping the faces of passengers leaning out of the windows of a train departing from a platform.Another fairly grotesque scene has the group inviting itself to a party at a villa. Necchi relieves himself in a little child's potty, and the resulting volume of excremental emission provokes hysteria among the child's family when they discover the contents.In another long sequence the men dupe gullible Righi (Bernard Blier) into believing they are a group of gangsters pushing heroin. It too is hilarious, and it, and the entire movie are very, very clever.