This has been a homegrown box office smash in Italy; to like it, maybe you need to be a fan of its writer and leading man: Italian TV comedy star Checco Zalone – a performer somewhere between Sacha Baron Cohen and Michael Barrymore. Checco plays a guy who has a posto fisso or fixed job: a much-coveted and outrageously cushy government post with zero work required. A new official, tasked with ending such sinecures, tries to persuade Checco to take voluntary redundancy. When he refuses, she sends him to ever more unpleasant postings, including an Italian expedition to the Arctic, where he falls in love with Valeria (Eleonora Giovanardi), a beautiful scientist of liberal views who introduces him to the hilarious world of politically correct righteousness in her adopted homeland of Norway, where he sees how awful it is in silly old Italy. There are some very broad gags, some only tangentially claiming the status of satire. When Checco looks through Valeria’s old photo album, he is disconcerted to see snaps of her with old boyfriends … then an old girlfriend and then … a horse! Oof. As for the title, Jesus’s reply to the question Quo vadis? (where are you going?) inspired Paul to return to Rome and Checco returns to Italy, too. Maybe Quo Vado? should never have left it.
