MAMBO ITALIANO

Director: Emile Gaudreault

Stars: Luke Kirby, Paul Sorvino, Ginette Reno, Claudia Ferri, Peter Miller, Mary Walsh

Year: 2003

Rating: R

A charming, funny, warm and very refreshing comedy set in Canada, Mambo Italiano centers itself around the eccentric (to say the least), typical yet stereotypical - and VERY Italian - Barberini family. Luke Kirby stars as Angelo, the only son of hardworking Italian parents (Ginette Reno and the often-hilarious Paul Sorvino) who moved to Quebec to make a better life for their children. Angelo grew up the typical nerd, bullied and pushed around at school - at least, whenever his best buddy Nino Paventi wasn't around. Nino always took up for the smaller, slighter Angelo, protecting him from any harm ... but when the boys grew into young men and Nino developed into a handsome and muscular young man, his sudden popularity forced Nino to turn his back on Angelo, in order to protect his new reputation as cool.

This abandonment turned Angelo to spending more time with his mother's sister, and Aunt Yolanda - who'd always wanted to be an actress in the movies, prior to her death - taught Angelo his love for the arts, developing his dream to one day become a television writer. When Aunt Yolanda died, it was more than Angelo could bear - his last best friend was gone, and God knows his sister Anna (Claudia Ferri, wonderful here) nor his parents had any real time for him. That's when Angelo really turned to television, to keep his dream alive.

But as if being Italian wasn't difficult enough, Angelo also harbors one other secret: he's gay. Having never been a part of the gay community, or even having been to the gay section of town (nor does he have any interest in doing so), Angelo just knows that he has these feelings inside; that, in fact, he's had these feelings inside him since he was a young boy crushing on his best friend Nino. Those feelings come rushing back when Angelo accidentally meets up with Nino (a hunky Peter Miller) again - Nino, who is now a handsome, rugged police officer - and on a camping trip in the woods one weekend later, the two young men cross the boundaries of friendship and become lovers at last.

They move in together soon afterwards, sharing a two-bedroom apartment for show, even though they share the same bed. To their friends and families, the two are simply roommates - mainly because if the truth got out about their closeted relationship, especially with their respective (and VERY Italian) families, it would make World War II look like a firecracker. But Angelo's frustration over his job, lack of success with his dream, and living a closeted lifestyle with the man he's loved since childhood finally forces him to crack, and he blurts out the true nature of his and Nino's relationship to his parents and sister ... starting a series of events that rather resembles, indeed, World War II - events that may cost him the man he loves; a man all too happy to live in the closet, even if Angelo is not.

This movie is hilarious. A terrific script and one hell of a brilliant and very funny cast make this one of my favorite comedies in some time. Kirby is so great as the put-upon Angelo, Ferri equally good as his totally messed-up sister - one who sees shrink after shrink because she's too embarrassed to ever go to the same one twice ... which is typical of the truly funny over-the-top joy the film has in depicting what it's like to be Italian. Reno and Sorvino, as Angelo's parents, glow in every scene they're in; a genuine dynamic duo of comedy on-screen. Mary Walsh, as Nino's mother (who's determined to find her boy a nice girl to marry, soon as his "phase" is over) also adds so much humor and dimension to the cast, and has some of the funniest lines in the film.

I loved this movie, and am sorry it took me so long to see it. Catch it on DVD if you can (the cable channel Logo runs it over and over, but in edited form), to enjoy every moment spent with the Barberinis - in a film with heart, character, emotion, a few tears, and more laughs than Comedy Central can rustle up in an entire evening. What a sweet and funny - even touching - film that deserves to be seen. **** - Reel Awesome