Because Checco Zalone doesn’t deserve a lot of the criticism he’s receiving

The only important difference compared to the latest films is that this time the mask of the ignorant, uncultured, rude and rude Italian is not a common man but one millionaire which, thanks to money, is so disconnected from reality that he even thinks of pursuing it the Camino de Santiago with his Ferrari and not on his feet. Checco Zalone by Good Wayapart from the long, golden hair that disappears after the first twenty minutes of the film, he is the same as always: it is not distorted or opaque, if anything he is simply less attentive to current events than he was in the past. If, in fact, films like Where am I going? e Tolo Tolo they went fishing for contemporary references to tell us how Zalone looked at phenomena such as the Fornero law and Salvini’s bulldozers, Good Way he chose a timeless story – the selfish grump who redeems himself through the (semi)rediscovery of the value of simple things – which however does not spare a certain ruthless satire against the left-wing intelligentsia all big words and hair growth, now incapable of speaking to the general public – which is also the reason why, if things don’t change, the right will have a clear path for another 30 years.

Perhaps the only sensible criticism that could be directed at Checco Zalone is precisely this: after having accustomed us to reading current events through his clinical and satirical lens he chose to take a step back folding back up a more bourgeois plot which, however, still makes you laugh – the scene of the lunch organized by the three Michelin star chef disguised as a farmer is memorable – despite many sites having anticipated many of the jokes that Checco would have said in the film – the jokes are not anticipated either in the articles or on social media, sorry. What remains is that Checco Zalone succeeded in the impossible: educating Italians about waiting in a world where if you don’t hear about an artist every other month you wonder if he’s dead. By spending a lot of time between one project and another without exposing yourself in any way in the meantime, Zalone created the event and, in all honesty, the fact that it manages to bring Italians to the cinema and make them laugh without the farts and the gratuitous vulgarity of certain cinepanettons of the 2000s seems like a small but great miracle to us.