Italo
By Jennifer Green,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Italian dog tale has emotional intensity, mild language.
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Italo
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What's the Story?
Based on a true story, ITALO is the name given a special stray dog adopted by the son of a town mayor (Marco Bocci), and eventually the entire town community. Despite a ban on stray dogs in this Sicilian town, Italo paws his way into people's hearts through his loyalty and good deeds, including escorting a woman home after she gets off work late at night, leading tourists around town, keeping lonely people company, helping find three lost kids, and regularly attending local weddings, funerals, and masses. His gentlemanly behavior makes him a minor celebrity across Italy. When Italo begins following shy Meno (Vincenzo Lauretta) around, Meno's dad -- the widowed town mayor -- lets the boy keep him, resulting in a relationship that opens Meno up to new people and experiences. Meno deepens his friendship with classmate Chiara (Martina Antoci) and, under the watchful eye of his caring teacher (Elena Radonicich), a possible love interest for the mayor, slowly begins to emerge from his self-imposed isolation. Subplots yield scenarios where Italo can help save the day, including a wacky town councilor (Barbara Tabita) who mounts her own campaign for mayor and whose son is the mostly-harmless school bully, and a seemingly crazy old man who waits every afternoon for a train that never arrives.
Is It Any Good?
Although this is a children's film with some characters and scenarios purposefully exaggerated for easy comprehension and laughs, Italo doesn't fall prey to glib sentiment. If you peel away the sillier subplots, irregular narration, and overacting among the adult cast, there's a tangible realism in the story of a young boy withdrawing from family and friends as he copes with his mother's death and in the widowed father's parallel struggles. An early scene where Meno silently separates the peas from the pasta on his dinner plate offers a poignant metaphor for his own loneliness. Italo, the wise and benevolent stray dog, provides the catalyst for father and son to connect again and learn to love and laugh anew.
If you don't want to adopt a dog after watching this movie, you may well decide to book a flight to Italy. First-time feature director (and, here, editor) Alessia Scarso and her cinematographer Daria D'Antonio lovingly film the notoriously-charming Sicilian town of Scicli with slow pans of stone buildings and wide shots of its valley set against the warm Mediterranean light. Italo is set in the modern-day but also seems romantically stuck in a simpler time when the traditional pillars of Sicilian life were still the town plaza, the church, the theater, school, and home. Brand Italy includes a broodingly-handsome dad cooking pasta, gorgeously high-heeled women, gossipy grandmas and grandpas, and rowdy schoolchildren biking down cobblestone streets past potted plants and hanging laundry. The setting is as much a character in Italo as the dog.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how pets can have a profound effect on the lives of people, like in Italo. Do you have any personal experience with a life-changing pet? What do pets add to our lives?
In what ways does life in this Italian town seem similar to or different from life where you grew up?
Does the dog playing Italo "act" in this film? How do you think a director gets a dog to do what he or she wants on a film set?
Movie Details
- In theaters: October 14, 2014
- On DVD or streaming: January 15, 2015
- Cast: Marco Bocci, Elena Radonicich, Barbara Tabita, Vincenzo Lauretta
- Director: Alessia Scarso
- Studio: Ara
- Genre: Family and Kids
- Topics: Cats, Dogs, and Mice, Friendship
- Run time: 104 minutes
- MPAA rating: NR
- Last updated: February 27, 2022
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