Twenty years ago Notte prima degli exami arrived in cinemas, the comedy by Fausto Brizzi which was a great commercial success in a rush of nostalgia and among the first to carry out cultural evangelism in the 1980s, a practice that would arrive in an avalanche more than a decade later. Today, on March 19, “Night before the exams 3.0” arrives in theaters. Revival updated to the era of TikTok and tiktokers, who take over the cast starting from the protagonist Tommaso Cassissa, and who tries to take the pulse of the late Gen Z.

This is where debut director Tommaso Renzoni (already screenwriter of Margini, Cortina Express, Elf Me) starts, finding Brizzi himself in writing the film. From the sample of the present made of electric scooters, pokè that perhaps are just rice salads, polyamory, asexuality. But also eco-anxiety and the existential terror of a future that smells of disaster.

What Night Before Exams 3.0 is about

The narrative structure remains almost identical to the original. On the eve of the final exams, the brilliant but arrogant and not very studious Giulio (Cassissa) finds himself admitted with the belief that Professor Castelli, known as ‘the beast’ (Sabrina Ferilli), wants to massacre him in the oral exams. A friend-enemy relationship is established between the two in the footsteps of what Vaporidis-Faletti were in 2006, while Giulio and his classmates meanwhile invent the return – with artificial intelligence – of a former flame of Castelli’s with the hope of softening her up a bit.

In favor of this Night before the exams 3.0 is therefore the fact of wanting to plant the flag in the now, in staying close to a youth that is recognizable and in which one can recognize oneself. Between faces and behavioral symbols, with the fresh jukebox featuring Olly, Ditonellapiaga (also an actress, chosen perhaps a little off target), The Kolors.

However, we ask ourselves: what’s the point? Because if the first Night Before the Exams played with the museum of memories, this new chapter does it a little too much with displaying the labels. Place and paste the reference to the classification of a generation without however discussing its crises and drifts. The only interest seems to be in falling back at every useful opportunity in a rather dull emotional education, in a sentimental mediation with the virtue of an Instagram carousel, in fears and cooked and eaten fantasies.

It could and should have been more

It’s fun, for goodness sake. If Cassissa’s humor doesn’t hold up very well in the long run, Adriano Moretti holds up much better, in the role of the protagonist’s best friend, a more truthful role which then finds its support in the hilarious relationship with the grandmother (Teresa Piergentili makes one swoon).

Everything else is present. A list ticked off line after line, placed there without ever reflecting on it beyond the second needed to state it. A hand raised in response to the roll call, not active participation in group commentary. Negatively – and paradoxically – the generational retreat emerges more effectively, that is, the submerged relationship between Castelli and the father of one of the girls in the class (Alice Lupparelli for her, Gianmarco Tognazzi for him), more full of lost opportunities and fragile hopes that go around and around and end up betraying the gaze of the here and now of the film – ah, here it is, the nostalgia that omnia vincit. From this perspective, Antonello Venditti’s appearance also goes against the tide, forced into the film and consumed in half a minute enough to be played in the relaunch on social media.

Renzoni can then be fined for certain directorial blunders, with which he occasionally invents strange and inorganic shots, minus the awkward and shameless use of product placement (that is, advertisements for commercial products ‘disguised’ within the film). And in Night before exams 3.0 we can say that we have rightly redirected our gaze to the contemporary, having intuited the horror vacui of a generation in nihilistic contraction. But ultimately very little is done about it.

Rating: 5.5

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