From All Movie Guide: Roberto Benigni's international hit Life Is Beautiful comes to DVD with a widescreen 1.85:1 transfer that faithfully reproduces the theatrical aspect ratio. Both the English and Italian soundtracks are presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. In addition to English subtitles, the English soundtrack is closed-captioned. Supplemental materials include a "making of" featurette, the original theatrical trailer, and one of the television spots created for the marketing campaign after the film met with Oscar success.

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VideoHound Golden Movie Retriever 2000: At first consideration, the notion of a "feel-good Holocaust comedy" was not up the Hound's alley. But Roberto Benigni's stunning "Life Is Beautiful" is not, first and foremost, a Holocaust movie, but rather a story of endurance of family love. Benigni's Guido is so intent on believing that life is--and should be -- beautiful, he goes to great lengths to ensure that vision for his wife and, particularly, his son. The first half of the movie is an amusing boy-meets-girl story, Italian-comedy style, with Benigni chasing and winning his real-life wife, actress Braschi. The second half shifts to the concentration camp where Guido, his son, and--because she would not be parted from him -- his wife are imprisoned. Guido fabricates an elaborate game to convince his son that the whole ordeal-- the "trip" -- is an endurance test to be won, with prizes forthcoming. In a particularly humorous scene, Guido "translates" a guard's barking at the prisoners as further clarification of the "rules" of t...

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