Amarcord (R, 1973)

It's 1930's Fascist Italy, and life in the small town of Rimini has turned into a bona fide circus. Titta Biondi (Bruno Zanin), like most adolescents, wants to become a man -- to be respected, admired, and appreciated, to have the freedom to come and go as he pleases, and the charm to get the girl of his dreams. AMARCORD is the story of Titta's journey from prank-playing boyhood through wizened adolescence in this surreal take on coming-of age. Likely inspired by moments from Fellini's boyhood memoirs, the film is a series of unrelated vignettes, loosely connected by a rotating cast of characters.

Director/screenwriter Federico Fellini was always a master at the art of making caricatures out of people (he was a cartoonist in the early days). Here, he uses his standard cast of clowns, mimes, prostitutes, thugs, disillusioned professors and street peddlers to deliver monologues, diatribes, even newsreel quotes, throughout a fantastic, imaginary Italy. His characters, flickering like flames, pop up in the corner of the eye, and then disappear again within a blink. They address the audience directly, salivating, strutting like peacocks, commanding attention. There is a lot of visual hocus pocus, but what this circus needs is a stronger ringleader; it's the narrative equivalent of skipping back and forth between random entries from a diary: at times beautiful, but also potentially dull.

Kids will probably want to skip this one; clocking in at a turtle's pace of 127 minutes, most children will find the socio-political monologues, academic literary references, and disconnected narrative aimless and hard to sit through, if not completely tedious.