The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I was surprised by the bad reviews, saying this movie was making fun of the Nazis and the horrors of the war. It's not true at all! The movie talks about a father who would do anything for his kid and tries to hide the horrible truth, making it look like a game to the child's eyes. Roberto Benigni's performance was brilliant, he perfectly shows that he himself is scared, but is trying to hide by being exuberant as the real life actor actually is. The plot is good, the ending is heart breaking. A mix of sadness and happiness. The only thing I didn't like was the actress who plays Guido's wife, who is Benigni's actual wife. Her acting is almost ridiculous. Also, there was a scene where Guido, the principal character, takes a megaphone used by the Nazis to communicate with her wife. That's so unrealistic. If not for that, I would have rated the movie 9, or even 10.

"La vita è bella" has always been my favourite movie since the first time I saw it. I can't find the words to describe the magnificence and the beauty of this movie. Roberto Benigni has really taken the love, that machinery that moves the world. Life Is Beautiful is about love, between father and son, between husband and wife and between every single persone that lives on earth. He found the love and the positive energy in a tragedy. and he was not hilariously about the holocaust, he made a movie that's about the love that saved people in that horrible history moment that gave hope to those to continue; the love that everyone should have but that they have forgotten because we have everything and we don't remember importance and value of things. This movie marked my life forever. I don't understand how some people doesn't take the sense. It's a geniusly thing, if I can say that. It's above all things. I have never found a movie that can be compared to it. This movie is about a Jewish family who live in the holocaust period, so it can not be that sad. But yet the tears coming out of your eyes are not of sadness, are of joy. Joy that you feel when you see the beauty of the humanity, in contrast of the tragedy. You see what love is able to do to a us. A father who saved his son from (maybe) the worst tragedy in the world with the humility. How can you make a child (the hope, the future and the innocence in the world) understand genocide if not by its means. To the person who said that this film is sucks because you can't be hilarious talking of what happened in the Second War World, it's no hilarious, he reflects all the feelings that every feel.

I am in the minority on this one, given the current 8.6 rating and its ranking at #26 all-time (!), but I have two major issues with "Life is Beautiful" that hold me back from joining others and proclaiming it a classic.Plot in a nutshell: A cartoonish man in WWII Italy wins the heart of a local beauty (after much effort). Years later he is sent to a 'death camp' where he tries to shield his young son from the horrors that surely await them both.Issue #1: Maybe it's just me, but isn't Roberto Benigni's character Guido highly annoying? Let's recap - early in the film, we see him - uninvited - creepily and unnecessarily sucking on the leg of a woman he doesn't know (to extract 'wasp poison' he says); he is constantly trying to steal another man's hat (because it's better than his, apparently); he steals the school inspector's ribbon and then impersonates him at the local elementary school, where (because he doesn't know what to say when he's asked to give a speech) he strips down to his underwear in front of the children....need I go on? To put it bluntly, Guido is NOT an endearing character, at all. He is a bit of a creep and a petty thief and he talks too much, with nothing near the charm of Chaplin's "Tramp," to whom he's been compared here by some. I don't get it. I was immediately turned off by his antics and never was able to warm up to him as the film wore on.Issue #2: The scenes in the death camp can only be described as fantasy. In fact, the entire film should be labeled as fantasy, because what we are shown is so far removed from reality it can't be categorized as anything else. Maybe I would have embraced it more had I known this going in, but I did not. Example: one of the early camp scenes, where Guido gets a hold of the camp loudspeaker and broadcasts a message to his wife, and somehow is not caught or punished for this? In reality he would have been shot ON THE SPOT and that would have been the end of this film. There are numerous similar instances of completely unrealistic and imaginary situations in the camp to move the plot along......yet we are supposed to become immersed in what is going on, knowing full well none of it could have possibly happened this way? Yeah I just can't do that. Having said all of this, you CAN sense the connection father and son have, it's palpable, it's real. And you want to believe that the father would indeed try anything to save his family, up to and including sacrificing himself if he has to. The film does convey that quite effectively, and because of that, it has some merit. I just don't find it to be 'one of the greatest films ever' like many other people seemingly do. In essence it's a feel-good fantasy set in one of the worst imaginable nightmares of human history. In direct opposition to the feeling of this film, and a much more accurate representation of how the camps affected the people interned in them, I'll provide a quote from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's book "Night": "Here there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends. Everyone lives and dies for himself alone."6/10. Light-hearted tale of survival set in a place where hope for most people had long since disappeared. Would I watch again? (Y/N): Probably not.

In this movie is the power of love for a child from daddy