everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A Disappointing Continuation

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Blistering performances.

My wife and I had been looking forward to this family epic, mostly because everybody seemed to lapse into hyperbole while describing it.Well... There's certainly nothing wrong with La Meglio Gioventu, but we did wonder what the fuss was all about. As other reviewers have pointed out, it's a made-for-TV mini-series masquerading as a 6-hour movie; this means the story lines are sweeping, but the production values are not. The actors are so-so, and it should be noted that "Italian" does not equate "arty" or exclude "soapy". Really, you could splice together 6 episodes of "North & South" and achieve similar results.Our advice: if you're into European family histories, see the German series "Heimat" instead. This actually is the cinematically brilliant, absorbing, life-changing experience La Meglio was cranked up to be.

Sometimes I really don't get it why some things are liked so much, by so many. This often is the case with certain mini-series and television work, like this movie. Fore I just really can't see this as an actual movie. In its setup it's certainly more suitable as a mini-series and also quality-wise it has very little to do with real film-making. And lets not forget about its running time. It's 6 hours long! No movie has the right to be that long really, unless you're Terrence Malick.I'm not saying that this production is an horrible one but it obviously for me was still a very disappointing one. Let me just say that whenever I would had seen the first part somewhere, sometime on TV, aired as a mini-series, I would have no intentions to tune in again to it the next week. Neither the story or characters are really interesting enough for that and besides the directing and visual approach to the movie is just too lacking.Seems to me that if the movie would had picked different characters and different story lines, people would had been just gushing as much over it as they do now. It wouldn't have mattered at all, just because it's long and Italian people seem to love it. Nothing about the story really stands out. It's lacking some good depth and multiple layers in it. The movie now instead remains a shallow experience, that really doesn't work effectively on an emotional or dramatic level.And funny thing is; I'm normally really fond of epic and long family drama's, or movies that chronicles the lifespan of a person(s).But like I said; this movie feels too much like it consists out of a bunch of soap opera scripts that got thrown together into one big long movie, when no television network picked it up as a soap opera. That unfortunately doesn't mean that this movie ever surpasses the level of an average and typical soap opera, with neither its story, characters, visual style or acting.This movie definitely looks like it got shot on video, which gives it an awful made for TV type of look. The camera-work, the lighting, the directing approach, it all got done so lifeless and without any imagination. There is absolutely no artistic value to this production, which is the reason why I think it's quite offensive that lots of people rank this just as high- and compare it to other epic Italian classics, by some great film-makers, like Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni or Federico Fellini, among many others.The story made all of the characters quite bland and uninteresting but you could also really blame some of the acting for that. I'm sorry but sometimes the performances just weren't good enough at all. Another reason why this movie failed to make an impact on me emotionally.But when you do take this- and look upon this as a TV production it still has some value and quality in it. Guess when you're really into soap opera's or overlong mini-series, you can still enjoy watching this, as either a movie or mini-series. 6/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Just when I thought I had seen anything worthy of ten stars, I discovered "The Best of Youth" and found another.What a magnificent film! As a starter recommendation, it may be the best expression of positive humanity in film. Marco Tullio Giordana lets his characters breathe softly, their inner thoughts often washing across their faces like sunshine coming out from behind a slow moving cloud.Yes, we get some Italian dramatics, such as Rosselini or Visconti offered, but those points take a secondary role to the quieter moments.A hospitalized young girl unable to speak from the fear of electroshock treatments. Another young girl radically committed to change, helping cleanup the mud in Florence, taking her ideology beyond her family to the Red Brigades.And characters such as Matteo, burdened with himself, unable to express his thoughts, turning from has family's outreached hands.The knit of personal likes and dislikes, music, travel, art woven through in a fabric that says "I am alive and life is beautiful."Take the six hours challenge. Find the DVD. Watch Part I and certainly you'll watch Part II and long for more.

As I was about to write my review, I was very positively surprised at seeing the wide, and I would say worldwide success of this awesome Italian "movie": reviewers from all over Europe and across the ocean prove that when a product is intelligently-crafted it is able to cross borders, even though it's deeply rooted in Italian history and could sound a little unfamiliar to a foreign audience. Most comments consist, indeed, of positive words of praise in favour of this movie: emotionally engaging, never boring, despite the long time-run, authentic, genuine, poetic, finely characterised, wonderfully acted, sober, delicate, sensitive, intelligent, never banal, captivating, enjoyable at every age: simply great. I agree with all the qualities outlined by the users' reviews, and just add a great merit: the total lack of any political line-up, in a movie where great political events and dramas of Italian history are displayed. Faults and merits are just to be seen, everyone may form his/her opinion, but Giordana never falls into the temptation to make any propaganda or engage any political controversy. As an Italian, and living in a country where nowadays every aspect of one's life is object of political assessment, as if politics were the only criterion of one's behaviour, I appreciate this political non-commitment (not in the sense of indifference, of course, but of sterile factiousness) as a comforting and rare quality. Everything, even tragic events with deep social wounds, is displayed with such delicacy, everything gets such an intimate and human dimension, that the movie can really reach a universal impact. For me, The Best of Youth is one of those movies you can never leave, I bought the DVD, which I keep jealously and lend only to deserving true friends. It's a sort of sweet companion, which never disappoints, it's so loaded with sound feelings and humanity that it is a sort of drug I take when I feel down, and recovering is granted!