The Stop Button


Nobody’s the Greatest (1975, Damiano Damiani)


According to Wikipedia, Sergio Leone was so unhappy with Nobody’s the Greatest, he had his name taken off. He directed the first scene, which is a standard Leone Western opener and is quite good, he co-produced and he came up with the story. The movie’s a tedious, at times painful attempt at comedy–Terence Hill smiles a lot and is quite affable, but the script’s just terrible. The plotting is bad, the resolution makes no sense… I’m not sure if the dialogue is bad in just the English language version or in every language too, but it’s awful.

The biggest problem, besides a genuine lack of scope–director Damiani manages to make Monument Valley look like rear screen projection–is the dubbing on the English version. The goofy voices Leone usually reserved for one or two comic roles in his films are now the leads. So it might be difficult to say Robert Charlebois and Patrick McGoohan are both terrible, given a great deal of the terribleness comes from their voices, but it’s probably a safe bet they are in any language.

The majority of the film, though boring, is never awful. Ennio Morricone’s score is silly and playful, qualities one doesn’t usually associate with him. And there is a nice bit, at the beginning, with Klaus Kinski. The conclusion to that sequence, actually, is where the film starts to tumble. It falls apart more rapidly at the end, when the red herrings and double-crosses dissolve and the viewer is left without any resolution to the story. The ending makes little sense, but, by that time, it’s such a relief to have the movie end, it doesn’t matter.


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