Baggio: The Divine Ponytail

This is personal, I'm a big fan of Baggio because my dad was his biggest fan. The film was released on the day that my dad would have been celebrating one more anniversary, if he didn't pass away unexpectedly last year. I also am a fan of films with short durations.

However, to talk about Baggio and to make a biography, you need between 2.5 and 3 hours to develop the person and the player. Unfortunately, the film feels like an appetiser. What it does, does well, but there are so many chronological jumps and so many important moments out of it (not even a minute with Milan and Juve, the most important clubs on his career), that it feels totally incomplete.

If you wanted to make a short film about Baggio, you should focused only on a specific time (maybe the WC94, maybe his time after that WC, maybe the time before), but 90 minutes is not enough for the man, and even less for the player. Watching the film, casuals will never understand why Baggio is one of the best ever, the film doesn't show anything about the player, what he achieved (speak barely about it).

It's sad because there was potential here. The actors do a great job, the colours and cinematography is interesting, but unfortunately everything seems so rushed that we don't have even time to be emotional during the most dramatic moments.

This movie has no pathos, no sense of scale. The reenactment of the world cup games are not believable for one second. They feel like they are playing a backyard game, not the world cup. There is no buildup. Actors are ok, especially the father who is the most charismatic, but in general I was disappointed by the sense of small-scale this movie has. Also no mention of Juventus in an entire movie about the life of Baggio? Too many important part skipped or played underwelmingly in a counterclimatic way and there is almost no sports or action, it's mostly introspective. This is not what Baggio lovers want. This is not a high adrealine sports movie, it's a daddy issues family drama that nobody wanted. Please have this movie re-made by someone else who can rework the script. Is really a woman director a good idea for a movie about a football God? The movie should have been made by someone who really experienced those feelings in the 80s and 90s, I am not being sexist but just realist. The director was probably playing with dolls during those years and didn't care a thing about football.

"Baggio" is a emotional movie about one of Italy's greatest footballers ever - Roberto Baggio. The movie takes place through his career and his struggle to prove himself as worthy enough.

Although it's a beautiful and inspiring story, the movie in total is just not enough and lacks a lot of features, first of all the time periods are not presented well, it seems like the story is jumping to fast from time to time. I know most of the movie centers around Baggio and Italy's national team during the world cup of 1994 but I would have liked to see Baggio career during Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milano and so on. Besides it seems like the plot doesn't show enough of Baggio's personal life, why there is no scene of his wedding day or when his children were born?, why the plot jumps so fast in time that we don't get to see much of his life?.

In addition, after Italy loses the world cup there is still 40 minutes left of the film to watch where it's mostly Baggio pitting himself and trying to recover from the tragedy in order to still prove himself worthy. Only to be disappointed when he is not called to the squad of Italy for the world cup of 2002.

Overall I thought this movie lacked a lot of features and simple things such as indicating time and setting, even if it's a story a lot will find to be emotional and inspiring, I find it to be not so divine.

I think the movie has its quality, but lets be honest here they left out something very important. We know baggio went back to the 1998 france worldcup, and there he fabricated, very cleverly, his own penalty, and scored, that was his redemption. That should have been the ending.

A highly ambitious film that scrapes a pass mark thanks largely to its beautiful cinematography and use of vivid colour. Arcangeli is so spookily similar to Baggio that the transitions between new and old footage are almost seamless. Unfortunately the story of Baggio's remarkable career is simply not told completely or coherently. It's fine for a football addict like myself but for anyone else it would be impossible to get a grasp on just how good Baggio was and how his life and career played out.