Here's Robin Williams in serious vein, boring us all for two hours with a dreary tale of the Holocaust in which people plod glumly across the screen as denizens of a Polish Jewish ghetto working for the Nazis, living a hand-to-mouth existence and dreading the coming and going of trains which may sweep them off to the death camps. The film's sole plot device is that Williams, as a café owner who no longer makes his trademark pancakes, is accidentally thought to have acquired a radio and so keeps up the spirits of his fellows with fictitious news of Allied advances. The suicide rate goes down to nil but, of course, it can't last. Something similar goes for the film which tries to set a lightish tone but fails to keep it up. A promise of black comedy and gallows humour just isn't fulfilled by a star who can't resist going for outright tragedy. Life is Beautiful it isn't.