I pompieri (1985)

At the Settecamini fire station in Rome, the hapless Squad 17 tackles its missions with spectacular failures, waiting in vain for a chance to redeem itself. The team leader is Armando Bigotti, who suffers from sleepwalking and has obvious difficulty approaching women. Under his command are Daniele Traversi, a young father recently widowed, who struggles to organize his life between the station and his duty to care for his son Tonino; Alberto Spina, a boy from a good family who is extremely spoiled and is reluctantly fulfilling his compulsory military service; Nicola Ruoppolo, a middle-aged former firefighter who suddenly feels young again now that he has been called back into service; and, finally, Paolo Casalotti, who, because of a bureaucratic error, has also been called back into service despite never having been part of the fire brigade, and thus finds himself thrust into a world completely foreign to him. Their misadventures are followed by Max Pirovano, an intrusive reporter for Telecosmo, and his cameraman, Tom. They all have to contend with the stern commander Pacini, who is in charge of the station. Alongside their disastrous performance at work, the private lives of Squad 17 also come to light. Traversi falls in love with Cristina, a social worker, but mistakenly believes that she wants to take away custody of his son, and even goes so far as to hide Tonino at the station. To help his colleague and keep the incident from Pacini, Bigotti is forced to fight a boxing match, which ends embarrassingly for him and for the ambitious commander's dreams of sporting glory. Meanwhile, Spina, who constantly boasts about his conquests with women, is soon dumped by the only woman who has ever put up with him. Casalotti, meanwhile, cannot prove that he has nothing to do with the fire brigade. Nevertheless, after his initial confusion, he begins to get into the role of a firefighter, increasingly appreciating the profession and almost forgetting about his wife, who, while waiting for the bureaucratic mix-up to be resolved, has set up camp outside the station until her husband returns. Through Bigotti's sleepwalking, Ruoppolo, who is madly in love with his young and beautiful wife, discovers that she has been cheating on him for some time with his best friend. Ruoppolo also makes a spectacular blunder when he leads Squad 17 to demolish Pacini's house, an act that gets him thrown out of the fire brigade. Having reinvented himself as a waiter, he manages in this role to give his former colleagues their big chance: noticing the beginnings of a fire at the hotel where he works, he discreetly alerts the squad in advance so they can make a good impression. But while they wait for the team to arrive, the fire turns into a huge and dangerous blaze. With Ruoppolo's help, Squad 17 finally proves its worth by tackling the fire on its own and rescuing all the guests. Their actions change Pacini's mind, and he rewards Bigotti and his men for their courage, while also reinstating Ruoppolo. At last recognized as having no connection to the fire brigade, Casalotti is reluctantly allowed to leave, but his former teammates, considering him by now part of a group that Pirovano has also joined, call him back to join them.