MartinHafer I saw this film on Turner Classic Movies recently and was disappointed with the captioning. It was captioned decades ago--when it was common to use white captions that tended to blend in with the picture (making them hard to read). In addition, the captioning was poor--only translating what the translator felt like you should know. Many times, people talk and what they say isn't translated at all---particularly if they are yelling or muttering to themselves. As for me, I am a purist--I want everything to be translated and translated clearly--and most foreign films are.Marcello Mastroianni plays a cab driver who is very, very proud of his new cab. When a couple guys try to steal it and it's damaged in the process, he's furious and wants to catch them. Their female accomplice (Sophia Loren) is the only clue to their whereabouts and Marcello searches the city for her--and, frankly, considering how stunning she was, it's not surprising that that he sees her once again. When they do meet up again, however, she is quite disarming. She invites him home and he thinks she has a wonderful family (especially Vittorio De Sica)--though they are all in reality a pack of thieves and liars. Poor Marcello is a bit dim and he doesn't seems to catch on that they are NOT the sweet family he thinks they are.After a while, Marcello falls head-over-heels for Sophia. After all, she is amazingly charming...and amazingly beautiful. But, when he realizes that the gift she just gave him was stolen from his boss, he's determined to have it out with her. However, every time he's ready to 'have it out with her', he ends up smashing his new cab. Eventually, he even ends up in the hospital and deep in debt. After a while, the cab is a wreck and so is poor Marcello. What's he to do?! This is a cute little comedy. While certainly not among the best, it is well worth seeing and has nice acting. Plus, since Marcello plays a cabbie, you get to see a lot of Rome--and I liked seeing the Coliseum, Forum and many other sites. My only misgiving is that the film makes thieves seem kind of cute--which is far from true--especially if you've been victimized by one. Plus, in Rome, apparently families of thieves are still a serious problem--definitely not cute in any way.By the way, is it me or didn't one of the thieves in the movie look a bit like Woody Allen?! Maybe it's just me...

moonspinner55 A young Sophia Loren momentarily entrances a young Marcello Mastroianni as a ruse for her friends to steal his taxi; he thwarts them and sees her home, only to find out soon enough she's also a pickpocket, and her wily papa works a luggage-stealing scheme down at the train station. Minor yet exquisitely breezy and uncomplicated Italian farce, with sexy asides and feisty banter no doubt charming American audiences who went to see this under the title "Too Bad She's Bad". We never really learn when Mastroianni's cabbie actually falls for the curvaceous Loren, just as we never discover when her feelings for him become anything other than business-related, but that's the beauty of the set-up. No scenes punctuate the weightier issues because the movie is issue-free. The most substantial exchange of dialogue comes late in the film between Sophia and father Vittorio De Sica as they discuss love: "No one ever died from heartbreak," he tells her. "In fact, that is what prolongs life." ** from ****

st-shot One of the last century's great life forces Sophia Loren is on fine display in this entertaining piece of screwball Italiano as she teams up with Marcello Mastroianni for the first of fifteen pairings. Loren is Lina Stroppiani who along with her father (Vittorio De Sica) are professional thieves. With two male accomplices Lina attempts to steal Paolo's (Mastroianni) taxi but instead of taking her to the police he grudgingly and through much frustration falls for her.Too Bad's thin and inane plot is brusquely carried along by the energetic, suave and sexy style of its cast. Loren's face, breasts and hips seduce the camera and dominate the scenery as she understandably flusters the comic Marcello. Loren's presence negates anyone stealing the film from her but De Sica as her father shrewdly manipulates with a suave charm, especially in one of the film's final scenes where he all but takes over a police station.Over a half a century later Too Bad She's Bad retains its comic energy and entertainment value much in part to the ideal melding of opera and screwball and the earthy blinding presence of the stunning Ms. Loren strolling the sidewalks of Rome.

Gerald A. DeLuca ***SLIGHT SPOILERS*** This off-the-wall "commedia all'italiana" pairs Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni for the very first time, and it is a delightful piece of nonsense from beginning to end. Roman taxi-driver Paolo (Mastroianni) is entrusted by his cab company with a new car, which he manages to drive into little fender-benders virtually every ten minutes. His biggest worry is his encounter with beauty Lina (Sophia Loren). It isn't long before he realizes that she and her two "boyfriends" hire him to take them to the beach just so they can attempt to steal the car.A little recourse to the girl's dad doesn't help. He turns out to be a thief himself who specializes in suitcases of wealthy travelers. The entire family, as a matter of fact, is a group of incorrigible thieves, right down to wallet-lifting grandma. Lina's father is played by Vittorio De Sica in a characterization that for me steals the entire show. You can't help liking a guy who, while a compulsive bag-snatcher, constantly laments the decline of morals and values of the times.Paolo is helpless in trying to convince the authorities about the crooked family's shenanigans, even after witnessing Lina's fingering of a wallet on a bus. He cannot compete with the girl's crafty wiles or dad's lunatic manipulation of reality. It is inevitable, of course, that Paolo and Lina fall in love, that he propose to keep her on the right side of the law, and that in their final public display of kissing, all will be forgiven. Love overcomes larceny.Actor De Sica, of course, is the great actor/director who would later helm Mastroianni and Loren's most popular films together: MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE and YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. This movie was made by veteran director Alessandro Blasetti, who had a sure hand with this sort of thing. And although it is not up to his greatest films of previous years like PRIMA COMUNIONE, QUATTRO PASSI FRA LE NUVOLE, and 1860, it is well-crafted and very enjoyable. A subsequent film Blasetti made a year later, LUCKY TO BE A WOMAN, pairs Mastroianni and Loren once again.