This is one of those obscure gems that gets unearthed and brought back up from the vaults I swear just to entertain nerds like myself who just adore 70s/80s Eurotrash, especially Italian comedies that basically make little sense.
So, since this is an Italian film, everyone in it speaks Italian though it's set in New York City. Street urchin Nino from Naples (the "scugnizzo") works as a delivery boy for a milk company. He literally runs into this guy while delivering who is a black guy named Matumbo who for some unknown reason wants to relocate to Naples of all places.
Nino and Matumbo spend a lot of the movie mostly trying to do things to impress these 2 white (Italian of course) girls they met randomly when they ran into each other. One early scene of him and Matumbo hanging with the girls and dancing to music from apparently a portable radio is one of the best nonsensical scenes I've seen involving music (a great dumpster-level italo-disco jam battling classical music in a way that honestly is undescribable in addition to absurd). Nino's main passion though is being a singer, which we do get to experience a few times (god help us all, Nino shouldn't quit the delivery business anytime soon). Really most of the film just follows these 2 elements and that's kinda it, except for a vague subplot regarding some heavies trying to make some moves on Nino but who cares?
The main reasons to love this lie more in the peripheral things, like a couple excellent scenes in a discotech (I'm not 100% sure which one but I swear it was also used in the film Liquid Sky, savvier older New York clubbers would know it), including some terrible breakdancing. There's lots of great shots of downtown/42nd Street/Times Square from the time period that I myself am a HUGE sucker for, I was sadly too young to have experienced the heyday there so living that through film totally does it for me. It's also totally full of Italian filmmaking clichés that seasoned watchers of these sorts of films will recognize and get a kick out of, like the cheeseball theme song getting played repeatedly at various points.
It's a lot of dumpy brainless goofiness and I'm just all about it. My next goal is to see Nino D'Angelo in "la Discoteca" because that's totally got to be up my alley..
So, since this is an Italian film, everyone in it speaks Italian though it's set in New York City. Street urchin Nino from Naples (the "scugnizzo") works as a delivery boy for a milk company. He literally runs into this guy while delivering who is a black guy named Matumbo who for some unknown reason wants to relocate to Naples of all places.
Nino and Matumbo spend a lot of the movie mostly trying to do things to impress these 2 white (Italian of course) girls they met randomly when they ran into each other. One early scene of him and Matumbo hanging with the girls and dancing to music from apparently a portable radio is one of the best nonsensical scenes I've seen involving music (a great dumpster-level italo-disco jam battling classical music in a way that honestly is undescribable in addition to absurd). Nino's main passion though is being a singer, which we do get to experience a few times (god help us all, Nino shouldn't quit the delivery business anytime soon). Really most of the film just follows these 2 elements and that's kinda it, except for a vague subplot regarding some heavies trying to make some moves on Nino but who cares?
The main reasons to love this lie more in the peripheral things, like a couple excellent scenes in a discotech (I'm not 100% sure which one but I swear it was also used in the film Liquid Sky, savvier older New York clubbers would know it), including some terrible breakdancing. There's lots of great shots of downtown/42nd Street/Times Square from the time period that I myself am a HUGE sucker for, I was sadly too young to have experienced the heyday there so living that through film totally does it for me. It's also totally full of Italian filmmaking clichés that seasoned watchers of these sorts of films will recognize and get a kick out of, like the cheeseball theme song getting played repeatedly at various points.
It's a lot of dumpy brainless goofiness and I'm just all about it. My next goal is to see Nino D'Angelo in "la Discoteca" because that's totally got to be up my alley..
