Remember that manic, rambling Oscar acceptance speech, when Benigni leapt around the auditorium? That might have been charming for two or three minutes, but imagine two hours of it.
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A winsome, charming and irresistibly romantic picture, and also a profoundly self-involved one that has nothing whatever to do with Iraq or war or much of anything else besides the butterfly-like spirit of Roberto Benigni. But I guess that combination makes it a great holiday selection choice for certain disheveled, liberal family groups. Mine, for instance.
Like an Iraq-war mirror image of "Life Is Beautiful," actor-director Roberto Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow re-runs the successful structure and comic persona of the 1998 Oscar-winning film in a trippy fantasia about a poet who follows his love to hell and, in this happier ending, back.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Benigni clearly intends to make some impassioned statements about the futility of war, the power of romance, the enduring strength of optimism. However, the once-appealing innocence of his exuberant persona has become curdled over time.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
A scorching affront to Italians, Iraqis and the intelligence of movie audiences everywhere.
Benigni's artfully composed images are as empty as his political convictions.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
It doesn't seem possible that a film with both the formidable Reno and Waits could be all bad, but The Tiger and the Snow is precisely so.
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
Perhaps a greater passage of time was needed to provide a more effective historical perspective, but "Tiger" has a bigger problem with a dramatic structure that sags conspicuously in the middle, never to completely correct itself.
The longer the movie goes on, the more annoying Benigni's infantile behavior becomes.