L'Ultimo Capodanno

L'Ultimo Capodanno is an Italian comedy which weaves together several stories in a luxury condo on New Years Eve, culminating in a total catastrophe at midnight.

At the start of the film, a motorcyclist has a big problem with a bus filled with a soccer team and their coach, who is also the team mascot, and is dressed as a big turkey. The bus is covered with lights, and perched on top is a 20 foot high turkey. The motorcyclist survives, and is headed to see his pot smoking buddy in the same condos.

Meanwhile, the soccer team meets up with a former team member who is now a gigolo to an aging countess. The countess is throwing a big party at, you guessed it, the same condos. The soccer team crashes the party.

NUDITY REPORT

The main reason to watch this, and also why many of you will need to buy it if it is ever released in your country:

Monica Bellucci comes home, starts to listen to answering machine messages, and undresses at the same time. She removes her bra, replaces it with a red one, then takes off her panties about the time the answering machine is playing back clear evidence that her husband has been doing the nasty with her best friend. She then storms around the apartment for about 10 minutes showing her bush and venting her anger.

The pot smoking kid is planning on setting off two sticks of dynamite at midnight, Monica Bellucci swears revenge on her unfaithful husband and her best friend, a family man gets the headlights needed to finish his classic car restoration, a businessman is in a S&M outfit being humiliated by a dominatrix for hire, three Mafia men are after him, his neighbor woman has decided to commit suicide because her husband is jailed in some exotic country, etc. The whole bunch are heading straight to the big climax at midnight.

no region 1 DVD

This is a case where the film might have been better if I spoke Italian, because the dialogue might have been clever, which is not easy to translate in subtitles. I did find some genuine laughs. There is no way I could get mad at a film that has Bellucci naked for so long at the start.

The Critics Vote

no major reviews online

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 7.0/10 (25 votes)

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by genre fans, while C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.

Based on this description, this is a C- as a film, but is a major release from the standpoint of celebrity nudity.