OK, I have to say that the old Don Camillio films were excellent, but this one is not as bad as people would let you know.
It is said that the hard line communists are watered down and that Don Camillio is too cool (not too cold and remote, but too hip, to trendy).
Well, it is in the eighties, so one should bare in mind that it was the time when everybody was tired of the constant struggle between the communists and the church. So having them actually work together and showing more of the down sides of a worldly priest and more or less a positive side of a communist leader of a local community is also a message. You can't have a crusade against something that's not evil, but simply is. The communists in that era (acctually in all eras after the death of Lenin) who lived outside the Eastern Block (and most of them in the Eastern Block as well) were not monsters trying to destroy everything. So in this case you see a very human communist mayor and a skeptical priest, who is still trying to fight communism for the very principle of it, even if there is really no need for it.
In my opinion it's a great movie, but with a completely different message from the original series. The times have changed, and so has the situation and Terence Hill saw that change and tried to incorporate it in the movie. It's actually very good that there were no stereotypical communist bad guys (like it's a positive thing to present the low ranking officers in Nazi Germany as humans instead of blood thirsty monsters).
