Metacritic reviews

Benigni, with great help from young Cantarini, has crafted a work of such complexity that you may find both your brain and your heart simply overloaded. Which, of course, is the rarely achieved goal of all art.

Its unique message about laughing in the face of evil clearly reveals that life is beautiful.

Benigni effectively creates a situation in which comedy is courage. And he draws from this an unpretentious, enormously likable film that plays with history both seriously and mischievously. Piety has no place here, nor do tears until the final reel. Life is Beautiful plays by its own rules

The concept is not so much nihilistic as it is realistic, and the fact that Benigni has made such fine distinctions so powerfully clear is amazing and moving.

While most reviewers will accuse it of sentimentality (a charge that is justified), audiences, who don't feel the need to appear rigorous and tough-minded all the time, will flock to it in droves.

Starts out as sentimental whimsy and ends as sentimental kitsch.

Benigni sets out to do the impossible.

Has good intentions, but its exaggerated celebration of quick-witted improvisation ultimately trivializes the human and historical horrors evoked by the story.

The indifference of the proceedings and the hero's slapstick behavior to the everyday realities of the camps borders on the nauseating.

Benigni's movie made me want to throw up.