First chapter of the Paolo Villaggio saga that has given a lot to Italian comedy. This first chapter makes you die of laughter but always remains very sad at the bottom, given this fact the film can be watched both as a comedy about the misfortunes of a man and as a drama where everyone makes fun of a poor man who tries hard. But it fails.

This film is a veritable milestone in the history of Italian film comedy and was the start of a series of 10 outings (which spanned nearly 25 years) featuring the hapless titular character, the epitome of a working-class underdog (who had been introduced in novel form by star/co-writer Paolo Villaggio himself); in itself, while patchy overall, it's still the second best in the entire series.

Here we are introduced to the characters which would reappear throughout the series: Fantozzi's frumpy wife (which would eventually be played, from the third entry onwards, by Luis Bunuel regular Milena Vukotic),his hideous daughter who looks more like a monkey (actually played a boy - subsequently a man - in drag!); his overbearing colleagues - the ever-optimistic myopic organizer (Gigi Reder),the playboy figure who's arrogant to his peers but utterly complacent to his superiors (Giuseppe Anatrelli),the free-spirited woman (Anna Mazzamauro) whom he desires but who's really quite unattractive herself; the employers, as befits the satiric nature of the films, are depicted as near deities with their offices fitted with armchairs in human skin and in whose aquariums swim a selected number of 'lucky' employees!!

The first entry has its fair share of memorably comic sequences: the football game during a thunderstorm between single and married men, Fantozzi's recurring mystical visions which invariably occur after having incurred a particularly heavy physical blow, the road rage sequence featuring a confrontation with a gang of thugs, the billiard game in which Fantozzi, after much verbal abuse, turns the tables on his superior and eventually kidnaps the latter's love-struck mother as security against his vengeance and a scene at a Japanese restaurant where, among other calamities, samurai are lopping off the limbs of those customers who are not appreciative of their cuisine!!

Ugo Fantozzi, a middle-aged accountant, lives in a poorly furnished apartment with an unloved wife and an ugly daughter. His life is full of failures and disappointments, misfortunes pour down on him like a bucket. However, Fantozzi is not without self-irony and self-esteem.