User Reviews

I love documentaries about the film industry and this expressed a completely forgotten aspect of it: dubbing. Specifically, this focused on the entire culture around doppiatori, which I didn't know existed.

I learned something interesting from this movie. I've always wondered why movies in foreign languages would be dubbed instead of subtitled, and now I know (for Italy, anyway). It's because after World War II, when foreign movies flooded into Italy, many Italians couldn't read. It makes perfect sense that those movies would have to be dubbed, and that set the norm for everything since. I'm very grateful to live where dubbing never got established and nearly all foreign-language movies are and always have been subtitled. For me, the sound of the original language is essential, and I hate watching dubbed movies.

It's also interesting to learn how complex, sophisticated and challenging the dubbing process is in Italy. The Italian script not only translates the dialog but tweaks it so that the dubbing matches the on-screen actors' lip movements -- so it's nearly impossible to SEE that the voices are dubbed. And the actors have no chance to rehearse; they get the script and start recording, without even having seen the movie. It's amazing.

Aside from technical insights like those, this movie is only occasionally interesting. Of the three voice actors (doppiatori in Italian) featured about equally in this movie, one (an emotionally raw kid who's been doing it since childhood) is painful to watch, another (a mild-mannered and very appealing thirty-ish actor desperate for work) is fascinating, and the third (a fat bald middle-aged blowhard who thinks he's both an expert and a star) is an obnoxious bore.