"I Vitelloni" is a humorous but critical portrait of a generation of Italians, as well as a poignant love letter to Fellini's hometown Rimini and provincial Italy in general. The bittersweet sense of melancholy that permeates the film comes from the fact that the five "young" men are way past the age of dreaming, but still keep dodging any kind of responsibility and clinging to the same purposeless lifestyle. In the end, Moraldo is the only one to finally realize that underneath their clown masks, they are nothing but losers in an old town. I wouldn't call it a neorealist film, but Fellini's style here is still quite distant from the baroque extravaganza of the 60's.