Tano da morire

Lovers of deliberate kitsch should seek it out and make it a part of all celebrations of bad taste. Lovers of “The Godfather” films and new age mafia types like the “Sopranos” have always been into bad taste and so won’t get this.

Roberta Torre’s debut takes true incidents from the Mafia wars that plagued Palermo in the late ’80s and kicks them into a deliriously gaudy farce.

Humor is inconsistent, and the film suffers from lack of shape and fluidity, playing more like a series of disjointed sketches. But there are more than enough high points to compensate.

An inexplicable multiple award winner, To Die for Tano left me more perplexed than pleased. But then I don’t really get Roberto Benigni either.

Manically entertaining, Tano may have been a popular hit, but its caricatured world of papier-mâché bad taste fulfills at least one Underground criteria: Save for a big showstopper in the Vucciria market, it all could've been shot in someone's basement.

The Italian film industry must be in sad shape when its latest import to the US is a tired bit of trash from 1997, To Die for Tano.