MAMBO ITALIANO

MAMBO ITALIANO tries to capitalize on the success of last year’s MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, but it’s a politically correct homosexual story that’s rated R. Instead of climbing at the box office like Nia Vardalo’s PG-rated instant family classic, this movie is deservedly sinking like a boulder at the box office. Good riddance!

A Canadian movie financed, in part, by the national socialist, liberal government in Canada, MAMBO ITALIANO tells the story of Angelo Barberini, a delicate, short, 27-year-old closeted homosexual whose overbearing immigrant parents trying to marry him off to a “nice Italian girl.” Angelo reconnects with his childhood friend, Nino, who also happens to be homosexually inclined. Nino abandoned Angelo when the other kids in school started to make fun of Angelo and his nerdy appearance. Angelo and Nino become secret lovers, but Angelo is finding it much harder to keep his homosexual lifestyle hidden. He decides to start coming out of the closet, which leads to the predictable consternation from everyone, including Nino, who fears endangering his livelihood as a muscular policeman.

Ironically, despite the politically correct pro-homosexual sentiments it wears on its sleeve, MAMBO ITALIANO shows the narcissism, lewdness, disrespect, self-righteousness, and anger that Angelo’s homosexuality has bred in his own character. In spite of Angelo’s surface intellectualism, he seems absolutely clueless about his parents’ natural desires for him to have his own family and his own children, within a happy, heterosexual marriage. His lack of understanding of, and compassion for, traditional moral values breeds anger toward his parents and even anger toward other homosexuals who do things he himself disapproves of or dislikes. This anger comes out in a scene where he cruelly berates his parents and in a scene where he can’t keep from laughing when he hears all the narcissistic whining from other homosexual people calling on a volunteer helpline.

Like TV’s WILL & GRACE and other homosexual comedies, MAMBO ITALIANO can’t keep from delving into crude humor, sexual jokes, and self-righteous indignation. Unlike network TV shows, however, MAMBO ITALIANO contains frequent use of the “f” word. If they had kept to the clean comedy in the movie, and eliminated the homosexual premise, the filmmakers could have made a halfway decent ethnic comedy.

MAMBO ITALIANO also contains some light-hearted, but significant, mocking of the Christian faith represented by the Roman Catholic milieu of Angelo’s segregated Italian community. Of course, the movie has no scenes where the Catholic priest that Angelo’s mother sees tries to dissuade Angelo or Nino from the homosexual lifestyle. At one point, Angelo’s mother bribes the priest so that she can visit secretly with Angelo in the confessional box. During the course of the movie, Nino abandons the homosexuality lifestyle for a traditional heterosexual marriage, but he does so because of family and community pressure, not because it’s the right thing to do. Also, Angelo eventually convinces his parents to not only accept his homosexual behavior, but to be proud of it. Next thing you know, the perverted sexual politics of the radical, atheist left will have parents expressing pride in their son’s pedophilia. If you think we’re exaggerating, just remember the left-wing, pro-atheist American Civil Liberties Union’s open support for NAMBLA, the National Man-Boy Love Association.

Apparently, the left’s main argument for homosexuality is that some people are born that way and can’t change. Well, if that were true, then it’s also possible that some people are born to hate homosexual people and can’t change, so why blame someone for being “homophobic”? Besides, some people apparently are born with a predilection to becoming addicted to heroin or alcohol. That doesn’t mean that society or the government (much less the Christian church) shouldn’t try to stop them. We can change birth defects like cleft palettes and some forms of dyslexia, why not change alleged birth defects like homosexuality? After all, according to the Bible, we are all born to be sinful, yet that doesn’t stop God from reaching out to us and delivering us away from the bondage to our sinful natures. We should remember this biblical truth and, while we’re at it, we should also remember the words of Jesus on the Cross who asked His Father in heaven with respect to the Jews, Romans, and Gentiles who crucified Him, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

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SUMMARY: MAMBO ITALIANO tries to capitalize on the success of MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, but it’s a politically correct homosexual story that’s rated R, with plenty of strong foul language, sexual jokes, and light-hearted mockery of ethnic Christian faith and traditions.