Movie Review : ‘Johnny Stecchino’ Meets His Match

“Johnny Stecchino” may have been one of the biggest box office successes of all time in Italy, but that didn’t count for much when it came to the United States in 1991. Little press and almost no word-of-mouth translated to obscurity.

It’s too bad more people didn’t get to see it. “Johnny Stecchino” (being shown tonight as part of Saddleback College’s free foreign film series) is a hilarious example of why actor-director-writer Roberto Benigni may be Europe’s finest screen comic.

He’s an inventive pratfaller with moves that remind you of Charlie Chaplin and Peter Sellers. In fact, Benigni played Inspector Clouseau in a “Pink Panther” sequel twoyears ago (he also may be remembered as the tourist who finds love in Jim Jarmusch’s “Down by Law”). Clouseau’s obliviousness to his own buffoonery are what make Sellers’ performances such a kick; Benigni follows the same path in “Johnny Stecchino.”

Benigni’s Dante is a gentle nobody who drives a bus for children with Down’s syndrome. He is enthusiastic but out of it. The picture opens with him at a hot party; dizzy women are falling in the laps of every man there. Except his. Dante is the outsider forever looking in.

Then he meets Maria (Nicoletta Braschi), a bombshell whose husband, Sicilian mob boss Johnny Stecchino, is hiding out from hit men. She takes one look at Dante and faints. He thinks it’s kismet, but it’s really just serendipity: Dante is a mirror image of Stecchino. In an instant, she realizes that he is a hand-delivered fall guy: Take him to Sicily, let the bad guys get him, then escape with Johnny.

Mistaken identity stories are nothing new, but in Benigni’s hands this one bubbles with freshness. He bends plot lines into odd, goofy angles. As Mafia vibes hover, one keeps expecting mob violence to enter the conversation, but it doesn’t. Dante is so blissfully unaware that he doesn’t see the danger sitting right next to him.

Then there’s Benigni’s take on the oldest gag of all, the banana peel. He uses the whole banana to create a running joke that neatly works Dante’s lack of savvy against the precariousness of his predicament.

We’re always in on the joke, and Dante is never truly at risk. Like Buster Keaton with a wall falling everywhere but on him, Benigni’s fool is blessed, even as the guns are pointed his way. In “Johnny Stecchino,” the comic is perfectly disarming.

* Roberto Benigni’s “Johnny Stecchino” is being shown tonight at 7 in Room 313 of the Science/Math building at Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo. Free. (714) 582-4788.