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‘Nonnas’ Review: Vince Vaughn Enlists Italian Grandmothers in Middling but Pleasant Cooking Comedy
Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire and Brenda Vaccaro play the women whose recipes and stories enliven a dramedy inspired by Enoteca Maria.
Along with Antonella comes her neighbor Olivia (Linda Cardellini), who was Joe’s high school sweetheart, to further pack the plot with a romantic thread that comes across as if forcefully inserted to give Vaughn’s character a secondary, if unimaginative motivation on top of his heartfelt devotion for his mother. Elsewhere, Maccie’s screenplay feels engineered to integrate all of the loose subplots into an unnaturally tidy whole by the end, including a letter that Joe’s mother left behind for him, and the notion that Staten Island locals might be displeased with an outsider opening a restaurant there. As a food-centric movie, “Nonnas” features luscious, mouth-watering closeups of sauces, soups and meats that the seasoned cooks put together, but doesn’t much engage with their origin or significance in a large cultural or historical context.
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