Sballato, gasato, completamente fuso

In a role that must have echoed her own feelings, Edwige Fenech plays a journalist for La Setimata who is tired of getting dumb assignment and being ogled by her male co-workers all the time. In order to prove her worth, Patricia (Fenech) bets her publisher Tozatti (Enrico Maria Salerno) that if she fails to deliver a quality article (about the sexual fantasies of the typical Italian male), she will go to bed with him. Talk about crazy feministic reasoning.

Except for this ludicrous set-up, `Sballato, Gasato, completamente Fuso' is actually a lot less crass than the usual ‘Insegnante' or ‘Soldatessa' stuff Fenech stars in. Whereas in those films Edwige would be mere window dressing despite playing the title character, this time around she actually gets to carry the whole picture. Of course she has to do another couple of fantasy strip-tease scenes, but even these are handled with some dignity, teasing the audience for the whole duration of the film, instead of taking it all off within the first 30 minutes.

While the love-hate relationship between Patricia and Tozatti is supposed to be the heart of the film, all her crazy assignments only lead to a bunch of unrelated sketches. Also begging for her attention is Diego Abatantuono as Ducho the cab driver, who launches into a stand up act each time he appears. A lot of scenes take place in his cab, and all of them feature terribly unconvincing back projection. When Edwige finally confesses her love for one of these two suitors, it feels a bit out of character. Unfortunately the film does not end there, but serves up more meaningless drivel (especially from Ducho) until we reach the 90 minute mark.

6 out of 10