In a landscape where laughter is often filtered through ethical lenses and collective sensitivities, Giovanni Bognetti lays bare the contradictions of the family comedy with the sequel to his earlier tragicomic farce. Rather than offering growth, the film intensifies the absurdity surrounding its returning characters — a hapless father, an overbearing mother, two emotionally disjointed children, and a grandmother whose inheritance turns everything into a battlefield. What’s at stake isn’t transformation, but the permanence of the ridiculous, a celebration of failure as the defining trait of a family that only finds unity in chaos. This is comedy not as relief, but as provocation, mocking any attempt to moralize its own characters.
It all begins with an unexpected wedding announcement: after inheriting six million euros, the grandmother decides to marry Nunzio, a man whose track record of marrying and outliving wealthy women sets off every alarm. The suspicion is instinctual — and largely fueled by greed. What follows is a pathetic scheme to dispose of the groom-to-be before the ceremony, staged as a farcical opera of failed crimes. Each botched attempt at murder reveals less about Nunzio and more about the rot within those plotting against him. Leading the charge is Anna, the matriarch and former lover of the target, driven not by justice, but by bitterness masquerading as moral conviction.
As the family fumbles through poisonings, shoves, drownings, and sedatives, the audience is drawn into a world where stupidity is the only shared language. This is neither a refined satire nor a realistic portrayal of familial dysfunction. Instead, it’s an almost childlike commitment to failure as narrative engine, with the grotesque as the only comedic outlet. Paradoxically, it’s this very excess that gives the film its peculiar charm. The repetition of murder attempts — each more ludicrous than the last — forces the viewer to laugh not at the situation, but at the absurd compulsion to repeat it.
A brisk pace keeps predictability from turning dull. In fact, it’s not the outcomes that drive the experience, but the missteps themselves. We know the plan will fail, and it’s precisely that certainty that becomes the hook. Performances embrace controlled exaggeration over realism, lending levity to a plot that could otherwise lean toward the macabre. The result is a film that openly mocks its own ambitions — and perhaps that self-awareness makes it more genuine than many comedies cloaked in moral lessons.
Yet a provocation simmers beneath the slapstick: how far are we willing to laugh at immorality when it’s dressed as farce? The film inhabits that uncomfortable threshold between permissive humor and veiled critique. There’s no attempt to soften the characters’ sordidness; instead, their pettiness is exposed with both glee and cruelty. This demands a kind of pact from the viewer: to continue watching, one must accept that these protagonists are unworthy of redemption — and might not even seek it.
When a moral seems to surface, it arrives as a final irony. There’s no epiphany, only resignation: the familial “love” that emerges is not rooted in affection, but in a shared survival of failure. Money, the central driver of the plot, is ultimately demoted to irrelevance in the face of a solidarity born from chaos. In the end, the film reveals comedy in its most ambiguous form — not as a redemptive force, but as a mirror. What it reflects is glorified mediocrity, egoism turned into kinship, and dysfunction elevated to a familial bond. It’s a conclusion that offers no comfort — only a merciless exposure of how much we resemble what makes us laugh.
Film: Ricchi a Tutti i Costi
Director: Giovanni Bognetti
Year: 2024
Genres: Comedy
Rating: 8/10