Avanti!

Timcop4.5

She's really not fat at all.

Mike D'Angelo5.0

97/100And then sometimes you just fall in love with a movie. Happened to me here during the morgue sequence, which is both surpassingly lovely—even the coroner's precise routine involving the paperwork somehow transcends its ostensible purpose as comic relief, taking on a melancholy dignity—and grotesquely acrid, culminating in one of the only lines of dialogue I can think of that provoked an audible gasp from me: "Ask fatass if she wants a ride." (I could write an entire lengthy essay on Pamela's weight and its virtually unprecedented function as a dramatic fulcrum. Though it must be said that Ms. Mills looks totally fine despite reportedly having gained about 25 pounds for the role.) That push-pull between tender and hostile is constant, and astonishingly potent; you expect Lemmon's tetchy Armbruster to gradually soften, and of course he must and does, but his essential nature doesn't magically vanish overnight. Even when the film's almost over, during the extraordinary scene that has Pamela excitedly unpacking her bags in Armbruster's room (while verbally castigating him for being so presumptuous, which that glorious disjunction alone is sharper than most of today's comedies can manage—not to mention that in your average movie this mixup would be the inciting incident, not a third-act buildup to their first kiss), he's still more self-absorbed dick than born-again romantic, caught in an unacknowledged skirmish with the sort of woman who's constantly criticizing herself by way of beating others to the punch. Emotions are messy here, is my general point, and that's so liberating and provocative in the context of one of Wilder's clockwork mechanisms. It's as if Margaret were in the form of a farce—there's even a similar exacting emphasis on procedural minutiae. (Can't find much information on the source play or how much Wilder and Diamond revised it, but I'm not surprised it closed after 21 performances, or that this film was perceived as an overlong dud.) Could have lived without the mustachioed maid and a few other sops to the groundlings, but my heart was swollen to bursting practically start to finish. A miracle.

theriverjordan4.5

Grumpy old men and Americans experiencing European culture shock. Billy Wilder is in the peak of his late career elements with “Avanti!”.And this time - the legendary screenwriter gets to write himself a happy ending of sorts. That is; it’s the 70s, and he at last gets to put some proper tits and bums in a motion picture. And no, Jack Lemmon does not escape Italy without first bearing his own beachfront full moon. “Avanti!,” releasing around a decade following Wilder’s geriatric farce, “Fortune Cookie,” and his satire of Germanic business custom, One, Two Three,” is a sparkling mix of the best ingredients in both. Lemmon stars as a curmudgeon of a Baltimore business tycoon, who must travel across the Atlantic to bury his recently deceased father. A father, who; is found to have lived more life in his last years in Italy than Lemmon’s sourpuss could imagine with the time of all the ages of Rome. Hearing throughout “Avanti!’s” runtime of the sexual and romantic escapades of Wendell Armbruster Sr., as uncovered by Lemmon (Jr.), it’s tempting to believe that Wilder found something of himself while directing the character’s journey. In his era as an elder statesman of classic Hollywood, Wilder seemed to discover a sort of sentimentalism wholly unwelcome in his famously bitter noirs. “Avanti!” - barring one zinger of a Mussolini joke - is all soft edges; the sort well-won from a retirement spent eating pasta and drinking red wine. Does the charming bit of sentimental roundness make this a lesser Wilder? Possibly. But it seems to be the product of a happier Wilder. One can almost imagine him taking early morning skinny dips in the Bay of Napoli while filming “Avanti!.” And as someone who, personally, has done exactly the same in those warm waters of Ischia… I can vouch that the water there is still absolutely clear. There’s even pictures to prove it. Warm Fuzzies Winter