BEFORE: Emma Roberts carries over from "The Art of Getting By", and so far this month the linking has fallen into a bit of a predictable pattern - one character from the lead couple carries over to the next film, then the next night, the other one does. It really would have been great if I could have found a way to make that pattern last all month, but it's going to end after this one.
And a Birthday Shout-Out to Adam Ferrara, even though my schedule's off by one day (again), since I started watching this film in the final hour of February 2, for me that counts.
THE PLOT: A young couple must navigate a blossoming romance amidst a war between their families' competing pizza restaurants.
AFTER: When I see a plotline like the one this movie has, I get really worried, for several reasons. (The tagline "Love is an acquired taste" is even worse, but let's put that on hold for now.). What I envisioned was a blatant rip-off of "Romeo and Juliet", where the young lovers come from warring houses - like two pizza places across the street from each other, one named "Montague's" or "Monty's" and the other is called "Cappy's" so you might not realize right away that Shakespeare's being totally corrupted into a cheezy romantic comedy, rather than a tragedy. Remember, that play by Billy Shakes didn't end happily. OK, that's Fear #1.
Fear #2 comes from the fact that the cast only looks about half-Italian, and the two leads don't look Italian AT ALL. This is sort of connected to Fear #3, which comes from non-Italians being asked to play Italians, and most likely needing to resort to loud, overblown stereotypes, and therefore I anticipated a crowded family setting where every actor is screaming things like "Hey, wazza matta fuh you?" and "Fuhgetta bout it!" and then probably "Everybody Mangia!" followed by "Pasta fazool!" for some random reason. (Count the number of times somebody screamed "OPA!" in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", it's probably a very high number.)
Well, this film isn't as bad as all that, probably a little better than I imagined, but let's say my fears were half-realized. There's only one small reference to "Romeo & Juliet" made, sort of in passing, and then the story moves on. We've already got "West Side Story" and other rip-offs of the "Romeo & Juliet" concept, so there's really no reason to do all that again. But there ARE two feuding pizza restaurants, next door to each other, and two people, one from each family, do fall into a romance, but that's where the similarities end. Romeo & Juliet never faced each other in a pizza-making competition, so there's that.
Fear #2 is totally legit, Emma Roberts and Hayden Christensen don't look or act Italian, not even a little bit. OK, they make pizza, together and apart, but anybody can make a pizza with a little practice. Their two sets of parents act very stereotypically Italian, and their grandparents even more so. Sure, you can easily argue that the grandparents are first-generation immigrants from Italy, so they naturally might act a certain way. And perhaps these Italian mannerisms would be a little less prominent with each following generation, so perhaps their grandchildren would act the least like a stereotypical Italian person. But they would still be the children of Italians, and these two actors just don't read that way, in both cases the connection to their parents and grandparents has to be taken on faith, I guess, and then every single character here ends up coming off as "Way too Italian" or "Not Italian enough", and there doesn't seem to be any middle ground.
There's another character who is obviously Asian and his name is Luigi, and this totally smacks of cultural appropriation in the worst way. Let's face it, if a white character acted black or a black character acted white, this would bother people, in fact it probably wouldn't make it into a movie at all for fear of a backlash. So how is it OK for an Asian character to act all "goombah"? I don't think it should be. Late in the film, Luigi is confronted with the fact that he's really Chinese, and he does explain his story, why he acts the way he does - he got kicked out by his Chinese father for being gay, and the Italian community took him in and made him feel at home. Umm, OK, I guess, but if he's really Gaysian at heart, and that's who he is, shouldn't his goal be to feel comfortable being THAT, and not taking on a fake Italian persona instead? If my family kicked me out my first impulse wouldn't be to just start acting Jewish or Korean or something else, because I'm not really that. So this Luigi character sticks out as a real head-scratcher here.
Fear #3 was realized, too, because the two older generations act very stereotypically Italian, and they shout at each other (and the customers) a lot, and they're very loud and they use a lot of standard Italian phrases and gestures (and some of them also say "verkakte", which I'm pretty sure is Yiddish, not Italian). But here's the good news/bad news - this is not set in New York City, which was another assumption I made based on the title. This is set in Toronto's Little Italy neighborhood, as proven by the skyline seen in the middle of the film. This could explain a number of the inconsistencies seen and heard in the Italian people's mannerisms and speech - and why the police officers don't look like NYPD cops at all.
There's a similar problem to the one seen in "Almost Friends", in that the main couple in the film are just not that interesting. Part of this comes from the two actors - Hayden Christensen's acting has improved a bit since "Attack of the Clones", but not that much. He's maybe a "4" on the expressive scale here, as opposed to the deadpan "2" he showed off in the "Star Wars" movies. But he still seems to have trouble displaying things like happiness, like his character seems unable to enjoy anything, or else he's afraid to really cut loose and just ACT in any particular direction. Emma Roberts isn't that much more interesting, even though she's playing a professional chef here, she also feels like she's just going through the motions and unable to enjoy her own life.
The older couple, played by Danny Aiello and Andrea Martin (as his grandfather and her grandmother) is at least twice as entertaining. Both fall just a bit on that "WAY too Italian" scale, and I don't know, I think Andrea Martin used the same accent that she did in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", if I'm being honest. Still, I think the movie should have been about these two oldsters getting a second chance at love, and having to court each other in secret because their adult children managed competing pizza restaurants.
Instead I was asked to care about Nikki's dilemma upon returning home from her restaurant job in the U.K. - it was supposed to be a quick trip home just to change her student visa to a work visa, but then she got back in touch with her childhood crush, Leo, and that really ended up changing her plans, at least for a while. But since we never saw her apply for a new visa, it almost felt like the director forgot why she came back to Toronto in the first place. And then after falling back in love with Leo, her reasoning for NOT staying in Canada with him seemed so tenuous, like it was just added to create a bit of last-minute drama.
Similarly, we finally find out via flashback what caused the feud between the two families in the first place, and it's very stupid. But, it also explains why the two adult pizza-makers aren't allowed to enter the annual contest any more, and it does set up the big embarrassing family scene at the airport as everyone rushes to stop Nikki from getting on that plane. (That's two nights in a row that Emma Roberts' character has ended up at the airport, and expected to make a last-minute decision. You know, if you don't use that ticket, you don't automatically get a refund, but you have to at LEAST check with someone at the desk about that. I'm pretty sure if you walk out of the airport and don't do that, you lose the ticket. And who DOES that?)
Good news, the two families finally get back on the same page, when they realize that the best pizza in Toronto is made with one family's crust and the other family's sauce. Still, if they re-connect their pizza shops they should probably work in two different locations, or on two different shifts, just for a while anyway. And our young lovers, Leo and Nikki, open up their own fancy pizza restaurant, serving those trendy flatbreads with figs and goat cheese on them. Bad news, though, in just two short years they would have had to close down because of the COVID pandemic. Sorry, just keeping things real.
If you're interested in playing along at home, this one's available on AmazonPrime, but also it's FREE on imdb.com - with ads, that is, and also on Tubi, Pluto TV and YouTube. FREE, what have you got to lose? But also, keep in mind that the best movies are usually the ones you have to pay for, and this one is FREE.
Also starring Hayden Christensen (last seen in "Life as a House"), Alyssa Milano (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), Danny Aiello (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Andrea Martin (last seen in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"), Adam Ferrara (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Gary Basaraba (last seen in "The Irishman"), Linda Kash (last seen in "Man of the Year"), Andrew Phung, Cristina Rosato (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Jane Seymour (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Amrit Kaur, Vas Saranga, Ava Preston, Nicky Cappella, Anjelica Scannura, Richard Zeppieri, Michael A. Miranda (last seen in "Kodachrome"), Aniela Kurylo (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Julian De Zotti, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Quancetia Hamilton, Christopher Hayes, Geri Hall.
RATING: 4 out of 10 soccer goals scored in the rain (umm, nobody does this, either...)
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