Nonnas is an earnest, slight, but charming tribute to a succession of Italian-American tropes, from food to grandmothers and the many intersections between the two There’s no mafia angle, except for a number of cast members who were on The Sopranos (Drea De Matteo, Lorraine Bracco, Michael Rispoli) or The Godfather (Talia Shire). The film’s based on the true story of Joe Scaravella, who started a restaurant on Staten Island called Enoteca Maria. The trick of the place? All of the chefs were and are Italian grandmothers.
In the movie’s telling, Joe is Vince Vaughn, portraying another guy who’s reached adulthood without really growing up (Vaughn is 55. He’s also Italian on his mother’s side).
After the death of his mother, Joe, despite a lack of experience, opens a restaurant and hire grandmothers to do the cooking, all played by prominent veteran actresses like Bracco, Shire, Brenda Vaccaro, and Susan Sarandon. The characters come from different parts of Italy, allowing for disparate cooking styles and amusing narcissism-of-small-differences fights over recipes. And they have interesting backstories—Shire’s an ex-nun, Bracco’s estranged from her kids, and Sarandon is a sexpot hairdresser, as the 78-year-old actress approaches her fourth decade of continuing to play a sexy older lady.
The process of putting together the restaurant leads to lots of plot beats borrowed from the second season of The Bear, including kitchen fires, brotherly bickering, and the need to sweat a restaurant inspection. There’s also some fighting with a neighborhood bigwig (Rispoli) who may or may not be a mobster. Despite long odds, it all leads, inevitably, to success, as well as lots of food that looks really good on screen.
Nonnas was directed by Stephen Chbosky, who made a fantastic movie out of his novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but went on to direct the atrocious movie adaptation of the musical Dear Evan Hansen (he also made the above-average drama Wonder). Nonnas isn’t like any of those films, but it’s a winning effort that’s sure to do well on Netflix.
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Also coming to streaming this week is Summer of 69, the latest from American High, a production outfit that’s come up with a great niche: Direct-to-Hulu comedies about horny, nerdy, nervous teenagers, like Sex Appeal and Crush. This one, the directorial debut of the talented comedic actress Jillian Bell, has a ridiculous but canny gimmick: Newcomer Sam Morelos plays Abby, a teen girl who’s long had a crush on a classmate named Max (Matt Cornett). Max is newly single, and Abby learns that he especially enjoys the titular sex act.
In a plot that sounds like something out of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, the bulk of the movie has Abby enlisting the services of a stripper (SNL’s Chloe Fineman) to give her pointers, and learn some sexual confidence, in time for The Big Party at the End.
The plot’s stupid, and nothing holds up to scrutiny. How can a high school student afford the round-the-clock services of a sex worker? She’s a successful Twitch streamer with thousands of dollars lying around. Why aren’t her parents around for any of this? They have important jobs that require constant travel. Why does Abby concentrate exclusively on the learning-69 part and almost not at all on talking to Max? Who knows.
Still, the movie’s charming and delivers laughs. Fineman’s a star, and Morelos a talented newcomer. Paula Pell steals some scenes as the strip club owner who plays it like a retired legend returning for Old Timers’ day. There’s a fantastic bit involving a school mascot who offers advice and knows all the gossip.
