Masterful Cinema

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

BANANA JOE is another vehicle for the larger-than-life comedy great Bud Spencer, one of his solo efforts rather than a teaming with Terence Hill. It was shot in Colombia and has an exotic look and feel. Big Bud plays a banana seller living in the sticks who finds a local mobster muscling in on his business, causing him to go into town for the first time in his life to sort things out. A fish-out-of-water comedy of errors ensues. This one follows the template of the usual Spencer/Hill pairings, with hilarious fight scenes, plenty of slapstick humour, the droll delivery of Spencer's lines, and overacting goons. It's bright and silly, lively and infantile at times; irresistable throughout.

Banana Joe(Bud Spencer) is a corpulent and kind illiterate living on a tropical island in the Caribe. He trades bananas when a mobster named Torsillo wishes to take his commerce. Then , for first time in his existence, he goes to big city for getting an identity certificate . There he knows a beautiful singer named Dorianne(Marina), facing off dangers, truck racers(with usual Peplum, Nello Pazzafini as a Torsillo's truck driver) and several adventures.This is a good amusing juvenile for Bud Spencer fans, but he's delight; it packs action, fist-play, slapdash, humor with tongue and check and is quite entertaining. This release has some cool and even hilarious moments, though the Terence Hill-Bud Spencer duo films are better. The film isn't always good , sometimes is fresh and diverting and on a couple of memorable occasions ,it's frankly delicious. The movie displays innumerable laughters and slapstick, including a sour satyr about bureaucracy and the army when Banana Joe is forced to enlist for obtaining a identity document. Sympathetic screenplay by the usual, Mario Amendola, Bruno Corbucci and Carlo Perdesoli(alias Bud Spencer). Catching musical score with noisy songs by Guido and Mauricio De Angelis(Spaghetti Western habitual). The motion picture is professionally directed by Steno, Stefano Vanzina(father of Carlo Vanzina). He wrote and directed in the 60s Toto vehicles(Toto vs the four, Two colonels); Walter Chiari and Raimondo Vianello shows(Heroes of the West, Twins from Texas). In the 70s and 80s directed Bud Spencer movies about Flatfoot or Rizzo, also called Piedone, such as, Flatfoot in Hong Kong, Piedone in Africa, Flatfoot in Egypt. And in the 80s directed TV series , the Professore Jack Clementi, again with Bud Spencer.

And that's exactly what it is; pure bud enjoyment. OK, it's not a Fellini and in the stream of the ''big booted comedies'' Spencer and hill got us used with, this one fits perfectly. But look closer. Buffoons are never recognized to their full value. If Pedersoli was to play dramatic roles with the same intensity as the one he gives to his comedy characters to make us happy, he would have been one of the most recognized actor of the times. Unfortunately, in banana Joe people tend to see only the comedy part of the movie. But the satyr about the economic system and the bureaucracy is so delightful... I gave this movie a score of 7 for overall quality and intelligence in its credo. Thank you Mr. Pedersoli for having made the choice of becoming a comedian over a dramatist.

Joe is a good man, that lives in a south American forest commercing bananas in surrounding villages. He doesn't have a surname, an identity document, a selling licence: this became a problem when local crime attempt to seize the bananas commerce of the state...... A good comedy, ironic (in the style of Corbucci), and with the usual iron punch of Bud Spencer! (here without his classic buddy Terence Hill).