NONNAS - Mark Reviews Movies

Nonnas, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 9, 2025

There is just something about a home-cooked meal in the company of those you love that can make it feel as if everything is or is somehow going to be alright. The man at the center of Nonnas knows that from his childhood of big Sunday dinners with his family and probably similar, if smaller, events throughout his life. Now, Joe (Vince Vaughn) is older and has lost many of those family members, most recently his beloved mother, so it's little surprise when the man decides to put all of the money he has, as well as a lot he doesn't, into a business venture that tries to replicate the experience of a rewarding family meal.

Director Stephen Chbosky's film is a pretty familiar story about someone chasing a seemingly unlikely dream, but in Liz Maccie's screenplay, that dream isn't simply about opening a restaurant with the hopes that it will succeed. No, this story has a firmer, more relatable foundation than that. It's about chasing that feeling of family get-togethers from childhood and beyond, because, at a certain point in one's life, all that will be left of those moments, which we often take for granted at the time, are memories and dreams.

This is based on a true story, specifically that of Jody "Joe" Scaravella, who grew up in Brooklyn and did, as in the film, open a restaurant in Staten Island with a lovely gimmick. The chefs were legitimate Italian grandmothers who would bring their family recipes to the kitchen and serve them to customers looking for a re-creation of that sort of authentic experience.

Pointing out that this is based on a true story, of course, kind of gives away what happens in the film, since so much of the plot is about Joe's challenges and obstacles to opening his business and trying to make it a financially worthwhile one. That doesn't matter, however, because that knowledge—both of the fact that it is a real-life tale and of the realization that no one's likely to make a movie about a grieving man who fails to achieve such an emotionally loaded goal—simply adds to the warm feelings this film generates.

We want this plan to work out—not only on account of its sincerity, but also for the sake of Joe, his friends, and those nonnas in the kitchen, who have stories of their own to tell and goals of their own to accomplish. Since they made a movie about it, we feel a bit safer in investing our own feelings into this story.

The whole idea begins after the death of Joe's mother, whom he cared for in his childhood home during her final years. With friends and people around the neighborhood offering him condolences and food to help him through the mourning process, Joe can't help but recall those Sunday meals, and he starts trying to replicate the food his grandmother used to cook—the same recipes his own mother learned from her mother and would have cooked, too.

The idea of the restaurant comes from that effort. Soon enough, he has started a mortgage on an empty place in Staten Island, enlists his construction contractor best friend Bruno (Joe Manganiello) to renovate the place as a favor, and puts out an online hiring ad looking for Italian grandmothers who would be willing to work and share their family traditions with the public. He convinces his mother's best friend Roberta (Lorraine Bracco) to join the cooking staff, and from there, she's joined by former nun Teresa (Talia Shire), local hairdresser Gia (Susan Sarandon) to handle desserts, and Antonella (Brenda Vaccaro), who's the neighbor of Joe's high school prom date Olivia (Linda Cardellini).

Challenges emerge, such as some bickering over the Italian regions from where the chefs came, the local community not taking too kindly to an outsider starting a business here, and Joe having to balance his job at a public bus garage with his new venture. Problems arise, such as a fire from an overcooked dish, a health inspector seeming to look for issues, and not a single food publication being interested in covering the place. These are to be expected, obviously, in any story about an upstart business, the external issues are all sort of in the background of this tale.

Which is to say that the screenplay is far more interested in its characters, their relationships, the conflicts that result from the stress of this situation, and, most importantly, how all of those interpersonal complications can be put aside or overcome with the realization that they all want the same thing. The fire, for example, causes some strain in Joe and Bruno's lifelong friendship, and while the film could have kept that going for some easy conflict, it knows a simple, awkward, and honest conversation between the two men is more satisfying than such dragged-out nonsense. A centerpiece scene has the chefs sit down, discuss their lives, and put aside everything that has come between them, simply because they can see themselves, their experiences, and their shared desire to do something with the life they have left in each other.

It really is that simple, but in watching these characters try to find some sense of togetherness and the old feelings of some of the best moments of their lives, does it really need to be anything more? Nonnas gets at some foundational truths about getting older and nostalgia, but it's mostly just a warm-hearted film with characters who are charming enough that we want their dream to be fulfilled.

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