The first 40 or so minutes of this film felt pretty amateur, both in terms of scene composition, acting, and character blocking. Some of this could be attributed to Jarmusch’s directing style or actor improvisation. Thankfully, Roberto Benigni steps into the picture after what seems merely a brief cameo and sweeps us off our feet with Italian charm and a butchering of English. To me this film gains a whole 2 more stars simply from his presence. After he came on the scene suddenly all the actors got better, and the scenes were more engrossing. On a side note, Tom Waits was very much the epitome of cool.