<i> Video Review</i>

****Excellent ***Good

**Ordinary *Poor

*** 1/2 “Big Deal on Madonna Street.”

Connoisseur. $69.95. 1958.

Probably the best of all the heist thriller spoofs--even better than “The Lavender Hill Mob” or “The Pink Panther”--is this comedy by director/co-writer Mario Monicelli (“The Organizer”). Obviously inspired by both “The Asphalt Jungle” and “Rififi,” Monicelli’s film, co-authored with the famous Age-Scarpelli team, shows what might happen if a band of hopelessly incompetent amateurs, idiots and bunglers tried their hands at a complex burglary. In this case, they fall into Sicilian feuds, give away their key, get trapped on a skylight over a lover’s quarrel and drill through one wall into a kitchen. Monicelli has a droll, voluptuous style that recalls the Fellini of “The White Sheik.” He also has an incredible cast that includes Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni and Renato Salvatori as the thieves, the legendary aristocrat-clown Toto as their mentor and Claudia Cardinale and Carla Gravina as beautiful bystanders. A pleasure for stolen hours.