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I was fortunate enough to see all of Sorrentino's work recently at this year's Italian Film Festival here in Hollywood and by comparison I can report that this movie is one of his best. To be sure - all the usual quirky idiosyncrasies of his style are represented: The dialogue not necessarily representing the individual character's intelligence but rather his state of mind, the quick, often fleeting hints at things happening, the sometimes inconsequential progression of plot which only makes partial sense once you've seen the whole time line, etc. This time the story lends itself nicely to all of Sorrentino's traits and save for the ending which once again seems somewhat stilted, his tale is a piece of work not to be missed. Check it out!

This one, despite its cast and talents involved, is only ho-hum and rather slow moving except for a few genius lines. As I wrote before in one of my reviews for writer/director Paolo Sorrentino, his characters depend too much on a stylized way of existence and just because they may be inspired by real life persons or events, that does not make them more believable! Sean Penn is in his "I am Sam" mode, with a bit of Ozzy Osborne thrown in - not a good mixture. His rock star's motivation to go looking for the WW II humiliation source of his late dad's made no sense and escaped me completely particularly since he hadn't spoken to him in 30 years!

Paolo Sorrentino has become one of the few major writer/director talents from Italy. Whether you will like his movies will depend on your preference for Italy's culture and way of storytelling, in Sorrentino's case a rather intellectualized, stylized approach to drawing his characters, often at the expense of believability of plot or his progenitor's actions. Having said that, this holds especially true for this early work of his from '01, loosely drawn on two figures from Italian public life of the 80's - a budding soccer player and a pop star in the Adriano Celentano vein. Without giving away any of the details, suffice to say that this film is one of Sorrentino's lesser efforts, especially the ending which doesn't make much sense.