BENIGNI'S COMEDY DOESN'T PLAY WELL IN BAGHDAD.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Leave it to Roberto Benigni to make the first comedy about the Iraq War, ``The Tiger and the Snow.'' Wish he would have left it alone.

Like the Italian clown's ``Life Is Beautiful,'' ``Tiger'' focuses on a man's goofy efforts to save a loved one from a horrid fate.

While ``Life'' understandably had its detractors, the Holocaust comedy found the rare, workable tension between humor and the gravity the situation required.

``Tiger'' doesn't do that. There isn't much real humor (at least not any that translates very well to American tastes; ``Life'' remains Benigni's only picture that wasn't just a laugh riot in Italy). And well, being the first Iraq comedy means that, by the time it comes out, events on the ground have far outpaced whatever seemed dire or bleakly absurd when the film was made. Not that that should have discouraged Benigni from trying to poke fun at the nightmarish misadventure; he just should have had a deeper grasp of what he was getting into.

``Tiger'' is almost ridiculously superficial about the war itself. It's mainly a dizzy love story, which Benigni claims makes it a powerful weapon against war.

With his usual manic goofiness, Benigni plays Attilio, a divorced Roman poet and lecturer, who dreams every night of a surreal, sexy wedding to Vittoria (the director's wife and usual co-star Nicoletta Braschi). In real life, the woman, a biographer, wants almost nothing to do with him, though she does on some level find his earnest stalking amusing.

She's writing a book about their mutual friend, an Iraqi poet named Fuad (Jean Reno). Fuad He heads back to Baghdad on the eve of the American invasion and Vittoria goes along to observe. When Attilio gets word that she's been hurt in an air raid, he wriggles his way into the war zone.

Once in Baghdad, Attilio spends an inordinate amount of his time -- and ours -- trying to scrounge scarce medical supplies that will keep his comatose love alive. These efforts result in such knee-slapping business as getting stuck on a wrong-way camel and blundering into a minefield. At least the bit where some nervous U.S. checkpoint guards mistake him for a suicide bomber is pretty good. But, really, it's mostly Benigni jumping around and waving his hands like he always does.When the occasional sobering tragedy strikes, it has little impact because the groundwork for it has not been properly prepared.

Tom Waits, whom Benigni worked with in Jim Jarmusch's ``Down by Law,'' performs a cool new song for the wedding fantasies. And, yes, a tiger does appear eventually, though it signifies little. In fact, the movie's big, final revelation is pretty much a cheat, dependent on keeping a key piece of information from the audience that wouldn't naturally be a mystery as the story unfolds.

No one would act as tediously nutty in a war zone as Benigni does, so it's hard to get worked up about anything in ``The Tiger and the Snow'' that doesn't compute.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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THE TIGER AND THE SNOW - Two stars

(Not rated: violence, language)

Starring: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Jean Reno.

Director: Roberto Benigni.

Running time: 1 hr. 55 min.

Playing: Laemmle One Colorado, Pasadena; Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

In a nutshell: In his latest silly reduction of a serious situation, Benigni follows his dream girl to Baghdad while the Americans invade. Amazingly, not much happens. In Italian with English subtitles, English and Arabic.