Mr. Rossi Looks for Happiness

Mr. Rossi [Carlo Romano] introduces himself as an ordinary factory worker who feels crushed by a rich, demanding boss and the constant pressure of a life that never seems to improve. He does his best to sound content, but his nights are filled with whispered pleas for help as he stares out his window. It’s from these quiet, desperate moments that Fairy Sicura [Grazia Pivetti] arrives, a luminous presence who wields magic to keep people happy. She offers a bold cure: a magical whistle that can whisk him away to any moment in time. With a hopeful breath, he blows the whistle and vanishes, only to have his faithful dog companion Gastone [Gianfranco Mauri] clamped to his shirt, stubbornly tagging along as they are swept into a wild trek through history.

Together, they must rely on one another to survive. Dinosaurs menace them as they travel to a prehistoric era, where the desperate need for fire draws the creatures’ attention toward Mr. Rossi’s beloved whistle. Later, in the grandeur of the Roman Empire, they elude lurking pursuers in the Colosseum while dodging those who would capture or kill them for sport. After a perilous escape back to the present, the whistle is crushed under a passing car, ending their dramatic voyage for the moment. Yet the ache of an unhappy life lingers for Mr. Rossi, and Fairy Sicura returns with a new proposal: she can pair his adventures with a travel location of her choosing, one that will supposedly bring happiness.

Her next destination picks are a blend of danger and wonder. They land in the Middle Ages, in an unnamed European region within her origin period, where royal guards chase them away from a castle after an accidental misstep with a princess’s tresses. The next stop is a remote island somewhere between the 1600s and 1800s, where Gastone regains his voice and the duo unearth a treasure chest. A rogue parrot becomes their alarm bell, warning of a pirate who would steal their gold, and chaos erupts when an unnamed African tribe descends upon them. The rescue is quick but costly, and upon returning home, Mr. Rossi resolves never to use the whistle again, discarding a second instrument of time travel.

But the call for wonder is hard to resist, and Fairy Sicura appears once more with a final pitch: why not venture into a wholly fantasy realm—the Fairytale Kingdom? The duo meets a host of fantastical figures, only to find themselves at Snow White’s doorstep, where Gastone is poisoned by a witch and must be awakened by a prince’s kiss. The tale spirals into a mix of magic and mischief that lands them in ancient Egypt under Tutankhamun’s reign. The witch continues to sow trouble, Mr. Rossi finds himself enslaved to finish a pyramid, and Gastone is revered as a god by the locals. With cleverness and stubborn luck, they evade the enchantment and return home, discarding the third whistle in the process.

A final encounter with Fairy Sicura invites another journey, but this time Mr. Rossi resists the lure. Gastone, sensing an opportunity for mischief, blows the whistle and sends them to the rough-and-ready early colonial American West, where a staged gunfight and a treacherous waterfall are only the beginning. Narrowly surviving the fall, the pair return to their world and the wise fairy offers one last prospect: a trip to the future where flying houses carry people and promise abundance. But the future proves tense and strange, placing Mr. Rossi in a rigid, spacebound prison for decades before a return to the present.

Back where it all began, the fairy reveals a hard-won truth: happiness cannot be bought by jumping through time. It must come from within. In a final act of self-determination, Mr. Rossi persuades his visiting boss to use the last whistle—not to escape life, but to remove the chief source of stress. In a quiet, transformative moment, he discovers that the key to happiness lies not in changing his world, but in changing how he sees it—and in choosing a life where contentment arises from within.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 12:38