It has climbed the box office and in just two days of programming it has reached a million euros in receipts: “Belli Ciao”, in cinemas from Saturday 1 January, hits the box office.
The comedy of the Foggia artists Pio D’Antini and Amedeo Grieco, written with the director Gennaro Nunziante and shot between Sant’Agata di Puglia and Milan, over the weekend, according to Cinetel data, totaled 998,942 euros, with 139,504 spectators. At its debut it grossed € 506,918 and beat the competition of Warner Bros movies ‘Matrix Resurrections’ and ‘Me against You – Lost in Time’, the other two New Year’s Eve releases with more screens.
It also surpasses ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ (scheduled for December 15), firmly at the top of the rankings, which at the ‘first’ had totaled 490,360 euros with over 100 more projection screens. Having read the debut data, the comedian duo rejoiced on Sunday: “On the first day we are leading the box office, ousting American giants and challenging this complicated period: this morning everything smells like a business”.
Rolling Stone magazine demolishes the film calling it “wrong from the first to the last minute – fortunately few: 87 in all”. The reason, according to the review published in the Italian online edition of the famous magazine, is that Pio and Amedeo “try to please everyone”. It doesn’t save anything. “What is hard to understand is the comic imagery left over twenty years ago, no: more”, we read.
Also weighing in the judgment is the direction of Gennaro Nunziante, who directed Checco Zalone, aka Luca Medici, in all his films except the last, ‘Tolo Tolo’ (“he fails to the extent that he failed with Rovazzi”). The opinion that has made the rounds of the web is tranchant: Pio and Amedeo are “wannabe Luca Medici without that talent, that balance of registers, that ability to be both very bad and loved, disturbing and tender, very high and popular” .
The review in the Italian edition of Esquire magazine is of the same sign, which speaks of “a film that is harmless like a thousand others we have seen” and, worse, of “the laziest and most obvious thing on the comedy market”. The starting point is the rather divisive monologue on politically correct language in the show Felicissima Sera, which has inflamed the television debate and continues, apparently, to produce aftermath.
Also vitriolic Alessio Giannone, alias Pinuccio. He does not name his colleagues but the reference is immediately clear to his fans: “I saw a film … to make Checco you need culture 4 jokes and a politically correct dress that fits you tight if you have no arguments”. Responding to the comments – some, in fact, even accuse him of “gnawing” out of envy – he adds that “it looks like a film from the 90s”, and points out that “the comparison was made only because the direction is the same with results different ”, in his view. For the moment, the duo does not reply to the criticisms and enjoys the top of the box office.
– .
