Tigers in Lipstick (1979)

Original title:  Letti Selvaggi

Director:  Luigi Zampa

Writers: Luis Castro, Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Slavioni

Composer: Riz Ortolani

Starring:  Ursula Andress, Laura Antonelli, Sylvia Kristel, Monica Vitti, Orazio Orlando, Michele Placido, Jose Sacristan, Roberto Benigni, Enrico Beruschi, Jose Luis Lopez Vazquez

More info: IMDb

Plot:  An 8-part Italian sex comedy anthology, all of which center around various women who call the shots with the men in their lives.

My rating: 3/10

Will I watch it again?  No. 

Oh, this is just dreadful.  It's 95 minutes of unfunny.  There are 8 short stories (2 each for the four leading ladies) lasting anywhere from about 4 minutes to way too fucking long.  As you would expect with a European sex comedy, especially of the Italian variety, there's a good deal of much appreciated nudity but even that isn't enough to save this dull, dull picture.  Stories, even the small ones found in anthologies, should have some sort of structure.  With comedy there's usually a setup to the eventual punchline, but several of these don't even have an ending.  I mean they really just stop without a hint of resolution and then move to the next one.  It's baffling.  The writers couldn't tie up simple, dumb bits.  The last two are the most amusing which isn't saying much because any life they might have, having watched the previous six waiting for the movie to end, kills any boost they might have provided.  The penultimate story is less than five minutes and it has Ursula Andress flashing traffic in front of an auto mechanic shop.

At the end of the bit we find out that she gets a cut of all the new business at the shop generated by her shenanigans.  It's mildly amusing but hot really all THAT funny.  Then the final story has a very energetic (and fun) Laura Antonelli playing a businesswoman who meets an orchestra conductor to date but she get work phone calls constantly so they only have a few seconds in between them to fool around.  The initial joke is funny enough but what really sells it is that the joke leaves the bedroom and continues when she brings him along to meet a client and it keeps going from there, escalating all the while.  I've rarely found the European sex comedies of the 70s (or 80s for that matter) worthwhile.  The humor is very broad (and dumb, and I love a good, dumb comedy sometimes), the men are typically extremely immature (I know, right?) and the jokes just aren't funny.  I was brought to this because of my love for Roberto Benigni.  That man is a comic dynamite genius but he's wasted in his brief segment.  And I unfortunately only had access to the English dub which was fine for everything but his bit.  I would've preferred to hear his actual voice.  What little there is to like here is all but destroyed by everything else that bored the mess out of me.  I'm glad I can now move on to the next flick.