Magical Nights: Paolo Virzì aims to, with this film, to mix a comedy, a murder mystery and love letter to Italian cinema. It is a tall order, so much so that what is accomplished is not quite that and it doesn’t really work. The characters are shallow, unlikable, annoying, unidimensional; the comedy is empty, cynical, and loud; the murder mystery is uninteresting to begin with and mostly forgotten; the love letter mostly a laundry list of names that pop up every once in a while. The central trio of performers (Irene Vetere, Mauro Lamantia, Giovanni Toscano), are given mere shells of characters, collections of tropes really, to play with and can’t quite come up with anything interesting; the rest of the cast is not given much more, but fare better since their screentime is reduced. The camerawork of Vladan Radovic is dynamic and smooth, but the film is heavy-handed in its golden hues.