You can’t really expect a lot from a Renato Pozzetto vehicle, because like all commercial Italian comedies of the time are inconsistent in story, pace and overall quality. However, in most of them, you can recognise an element of changing time and one can examine a cultural context in the setting of the story that can be of relevant interest. Here, Italy is portrayed as a place where people, in order to be happy, must have enough money to be able to afford a cleaning lady, have nice clothes and all that is necessary. The problem with this film is that as far as the central theme is concerned, it does not seem to have set its priorities straight. Let me explain myself; the plot is mainly about a man who, having lost his job at the same time that his wife gets a promotion, becomes the ‘housewife’ figure. Well, instead of concentrating on the burden and plight of a man who has lost his job, the film widely concentrates more on a much weaker and naive subject, like the gender balance one that sees the female character get close to becoming manly and in the case of the male character he becomes feminine. This is a subject that gives the film an opportunity and a hook to many cheap laughs that flirt with the burlesque and sexy elements, aided by the introduction of a bisexual co-worker of Eleonora Giorgi and a homosexual worker in the house where Renato Pozzetto works. Eventually, this is only a reason for us to get cheap homosexual innuendo laughs and see Giorgi’s tits.
As I said, you can’t expect much from this movie. The story is inconsistent and most of the time we should be left wondering whether this movie even knows where it’s going. I am never too excited about watching Pozzetto in action either and find him to be quite overrated, although not as much as Jerry Calá. Essentially, however, Pozzetto always plays himself in the movies, and at the very least either he shows his confidence in underplaying his parts or we are familiar enough to forgive and even in some cases enjoy his lack of charisma in his cinematic performances.
WATCH FOR THE MOMENT – The sequence where Pozzetto tries to suggest his project of the floating house to a marine official. It has nothing to do with the plot, but it’s probably the only bit in the movie that will make anyone gag.