At the heart of [Wertmuller's films] is formula—a very popular one, but a formula all the same. It may just be that when you've seen one Wertmuller, you've seen them all, or enough, or some permutation thereof….

Wertmuller's formula may raise baby Wertmullers, but such a diet can be monotonous, something the director herself must realize as she strives to one-up herself from punchline to pratfall. The ingredients—politics, buffoonery, hubris, nemesis, pathos, bathos, comedy, tragedy, melodrama, psychodrama, Giancarlo Giannini, misplaced convictions, mismotivated sex, displaced honor, dialogue permeated with the comparisons of religion and politics to the remotest banalities—are all dumped in varying quantities into the vat and cooked just long enough to produce the sweet smell of excess. Wertmuller's timing isn't off; there's simply too much of everything….

Wertmuller's formula requires the grand overview, a Message lurking obtrusively behind every turn of events, every churn...