With the release of Good CaminoChecco Zalone returns to the cinema confirming a now consolidated certainty: each of his films is much more than a simple Christmas comedy. Between discussions on alleged box office records, hasty judgments and preventive controversies, the new work signed with Gennaro Nunziante has rekindled a debate that goes beyond box office numbers.
The golden rule of Italian comedy
Good Camino divides, provokes discussion, but above all forces us to look in the mirror, using laughter as a tool of social analysis. It is from here that we can start to understand why Zalone, today, remains a unique case in the panorama of Italian cinema. The real secret of Checco Zalone’s success lies in an ancient, but now almost forgotten, rule of Italian comedy: making every spectator believe that it is the one sitting next to who is being made fun of, not him.
It’s a lesson that comes straight from Alberto Sordi, Mario Monicelli and Paolo Villaggio, but which today only Zalone seems to know how to apply consistently. In his films no one really feels excluded, because everyone has the illusion of laughing at others.
Laughing left and right
And then, unlike much contemporary comedy, Checco Zalone does not choose a single target. In his films satire targets left and right, progressives and conservatives, provincials and bourgeois, clever and moralists. In Good Camino we laugh at the rich man who doesn’t want to work, but also at those who preach high values only to then deny them in practice. No ideology saved, no position truly safe. It is precisely this balance that makes it transversal: everyone finds someone to mock, without feeling directly called into question.
Good Camino as a social mirror
In Good Camino there is much more than a sequence of gags. The film works as an accessible social satire, capable of describing contemporary Italy without ever turning into a moral lesson. Zalone stages the contradictions of the capitalism of appearance, of ostentatious success, of postponed responsibilities. Laughter arises from recognition, but is always mediated by comic distance: we recognize each other, but not too much.
A dysfunctional coming-of-age novel
Beneath the comical surface, Good Camino it can be read as an atypical Bildungsroman. On the one hand there is a fragile daughter, Cristal, who learns to get things done despite social pressures; on the other, a father who discovers, late and clumsily, that love is worth more than money. The generational point of view overturns traditional roles and entrusts young people with the ability to indicate a possible path, literally and symbolically.
Like Zalone, no one: for better or for worse
Checco Zalone is not the “most refined” comedian nor the most politically aligned. However, he is the only one today capable of speaking to everyone, without openly declaring which side he is on. His cinema does not console or absolve, but deals blows with apparent lightness. And perhaps this is precisely the reason why, for years, (almost) everyone has liked it: because everyone is convinced that the object of laughter is someone else.
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