Santa Maradona (2001)

Powerful

Lack of good storyline.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Andrea and Bart are two good friends recently graduated from college and starting their own lives. Andrea, who has graduated from what might be the equivalent of Liberal Arts, finds the grim reality of finding a job that will help him start a career. Bart, on the other hand, is a lazy sort whose only purpose in life seems to be talking about outrageous stories about terrible things in the news, probably. The duo's repartee is the basis of the film, as two diverse twenty-somethings go aimlessly around the city playing tricks and stealing books they cannot afford to buy otherwise.Andrea meets, by chance, the lovely Dolores, a young university student interested in making a career in the theater. Andrea falls madly in love with the gorgeous woman, but there is a big problem. Dolores comes clean telling Andrea about meeting a director who was interested in casting her for a role in his new play. He took her to dinner and then to his apartment where both ended up having sex. Even though this happened before they even met, Andrea cannot get over the fact that he was not her first one. The action is interspersed with the two buddies love for soccer, although their idol, Diego Maradona, was long retired from the game.Marco Ponti, who had written for the Italian cinema, was making his full length debut with "Santa Maradona" a buddy film that should have been better, after all, it has the right elements going into it, in addition to the principals who are appealing in the work they have done in movies from their country. The film is a crazy combination of styles as it kept reminding this viewer about the films of Kevin Smith as well as Danny Boyle in the way these two friends go through life, one wanting to enter the employed classes while the other refuses to take part into anything serious with his life.Stefano Accorsi and Libero De Rienzo are seen as Andrea and Bart. They have done better in other films. Mr. Accorsi is the serious one, while Mr. De Rienzo has the best opportunities to be funny with his Bart. Beautiful Anita Caprioli plays Dolores, Andrea's love interest, and Mandela Tayde appears as Lucia.

It was a hot summer night when I first saw the movie, and straight from get go the Italian atmosphere displayed so prominently in this movie just sucked me in.All the actors in the movie have excellent charisma and presence on screen which is aided by the chemistry between them all. You really feel like you are watching every day life people having a good time rather than a scripted movie. Anita Caprioli is absolutely stunning in this film, from the first scene that she is in you can't stop looking from her.Now for the not so good. As many users before me mentioned this movie deals with some major issues in the Italian life, such as unemployment for the younger generation. Andrea keeps looking for work and keeps getting rejected while Bart has given up altogether and settles for some street philosophy and bumming around. Aside from that the story slows down towards the end, after Adrea dumps Dolores, and the movie doesn't really recover from there. Most of the fun in this movie was watching the relationship develop, and when that disappears and the missing housemate comes back the story just gets ridiculous to the point where the whole feel of the movie is disturbed and feels as though a different director took over.To finish this all off, I still enjoyed this movie immensely, particularly because of the chemistry of the leads and if you have a chance sit down and give this movie a shot. Won't be disappointed

I just came across this movie by accident. Switched through the channels and got sucked in by "Santa Maradona". The thing that grabbed my intention first was the story of the two main characters: aimless, jobless, clueless. Sounds familiar. Stefano Accorsi and Libero De Rienzo are wonderful in the leading roles. The conversations are totally true to life and kind of intriguing, if pointless. Imagine the characters of "Before Sunrise" minus all the romantic feelings and dreams and you get an idea of the dialog in this movie. The story is rather anti-climatic until the movie suddenly ends and that is a bit of a flaw. On the other hand, it's just further proof that this movie was intended to be as realistic as possible. Life is like that for people like Andrea and Bart. No big happy ending, no dramatic development, just a long monotonous chain of meaningless events. Yep, if you're looking for something gaudier watch "Reality Bites", but don't think that that movie has anything to do with reality.

oh what a terrible movie... It looks like the screenwriter/directed was locked in a room with a copy of Clerks and a copy of Chasing Amy and left there to rot for five years. Derivative, manipulative, full of wannabe "witty" dialogue that's absolutely stupid and pointless (with more of a hint of homophobia)... it was clearly made just because the male lead Stefano Accorsi (already a display of acting mannerism) helped pitching the script. A perfect example of why italian film industry is getting shoddier and shoddier.