This is a melodrama and you should not expect anything else. But what a melodrama! In the hands of a great director, using an eccentric story involving some eccentric people, it conveys straight to the heart how the great darkness descended upon Europe in the 1930's. It tells you that the greatest evil is the work of humans, and that the potential for evil lurks in the human soul. But, and here is the movie greatest strength, it shows you that humans possess the capacity to be human and to act human, when they heed Shakespeare's advice: "Love thyself last". All the negative comments that can be made about this or that deficiency caused me to downgrade this movie's rating from a "10" to a mere "9". Go see it. If you have kids - make sure to take them along for a great and satisfying lesson about life as it should be lived.
Review of Tea with Mussolini
