MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Volere Volare’ Takes Too Long to Take Off

Nighttime in Maurizio Nichetti’s “Volere Volare” (Beverly Center Cineplex, Laemmle’s Monica). Walking along an amorously lit Italian street are a skinny prostitute and a shy little admirer named, variously, “Trumpet,” “Little Mustache” and “Maurizio.”

The air is sultry; the couple (Angela Finocchiaro and Maurizio Nichetti) are sloshed. And, as they stroll, Maurizio finds that his hands are getting out of control--not in the usual sense, but in a more pataphysical way. Detached from his body, they soar through the air, swooping and grabbing at his would-be inamorata’s buttocks and breasts with lusty abandon. They’re cartoon hands, yellow-gloved, madly impudent, and Maurizio, who is actually turning into a cartoon, can only watch helplessly--as his raucous darling chuckles at these brazen advances.

That’s one of the film’s showpiece scenes and, by itself, it’s an exhilarating mix of technological wizardry, moonstruck wish-fulfillment and smutty humor. If the rest of the movie were as exuberant, Nichetti might have matched his 1989 “Icicle Thief”--in which he played the hapless, frizzy-headed, Woody Allen-ish filmmaker, trapped in the projection of his own neo-realist film. But “Volere Volare” doesn’t display “Icicle Thief’s” nonstop ingenuity. The scenario, bizarrely split, doesn’t sufficiently milk its own premise.

Nichetti keeps Maurizio’s man-into-movie metamorphosis for the last half of the film, and the best gags mostly for the last 15 minutes. And, while this builds up to a nice comic paroxysm, climaxing in the promiscuous entanglement of human and toon that “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” could only hint at, the rest seems stretched, spread out. “Volere Volare” means “I Want to Fly,” and that’s the feeling this movie may induce: We keep waiting for these filmmakers to soar, bemused or confused at their long, dawdling, expository set-up.

Feature-length cartoons have staged such a rich comeback since “Roger Rabbit” in 1988, that an art-film foreign variant was probably inevitable. And perhaps it was inevitable that the man to dream it up would be Nichetti, who started his career as a writer and animator for Bruno Bozetto, and made his on-screen debut as the hapless animator whose cartoons escape in Bozetto’s 1976 “Allegro Non Troppo.” Nichetti’s co-director/writer here is another Bozetto veteran animator, Guido Manuli, and they’re both good at playing with the mechanics of film, reaching for the casual virtuoso wit of a Keaton or an Ernie Kovacs.

In a way, “Volere Volare” is an expansion of the “Allegro” gag. Maurizio’s alter ego here is a hapless sound-effects man who dubs antique cartoons in a seedy little studio, with his lecherous brother (played by Italian critic Patrizio Roversi), and the first inkling we have of something amiss are scenes where the projector beam starts “leaking” little cartoon animals into Maurizio’s pockets.

Dramatically, it’s obvious that Maurizio turns toon because he wants to behave with the same reckless, earth-defying impudence as Popeye. He’s a shy little man in love with a rambunctious hooker, and being Mighty Maurizio Mouse is the only way he can crack his own reserve. But, the ostensible cause is that beam, the movie’s catch-all explanation.

Angela Finocchiaro won the Italian Golden Ciak best actress prize for her performance as jaded Martina, but there’s too much of it. Despite her whimsical assortment of dream-craving johns, including twin bearded voyeur-architects who always appear to the strains of Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette” (Hitchcock’s TV theme), it’s hard to muster much interest in her early scenes, or in the lewd jokes with Maurizio’s brother and his bevy of dubbing-studio moaners.

It’s only in the mixed live-action/cartoon comedy that Nichetti and Manuli, really shake loose. Too often, early on, Nichetti seems to be trying unsuccessfully to turn himself into Blake Edwards. When, at long last, he gets switched on-screen into a bouncing little toon, hot to trot, “Volere Volare” (MPAA-rated R for sensuality) finally flies.

‘Volere Volare’

Maurizio Nichetti: Maurizio/Little Mustache

Angela Finocchiaro: Martina

Mariella Valentini: Martina’s Girlfriend

Patrizio Roversi: Maurizio’s Brother

A Fine Line Pictures release. Director/Screenplay Maurizio Nichetti, Guido Manuli. Executive producer Ernesto Di Sarro. Cinematographer Mario Battistoni. Editor Rita Rossi, Anna Missoni. Set Design/Costumes Maria Pia Angelini. Music Manuel De Sica. Animation Gruppo Quick Sand. Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (sensuality).