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Joe Scaravella is a man dealing with the death of his mother. He keeps thinking about his childhood in 1970s Brooklyn when his mom Maria and his grandmother would cook together in the kitchen for family and friends. He tries to make all their old recipes but can't figure out how to make his grandmother's special Sunday gravy sauce.
His best friend Bruno and Bruno's wife Stella are worried about Joe. They tell him he should use his mother's life insurance money to do something good for himself. Joe goes to an outdoor market on Staten Island where he used to shop with his mom and grandmother. There he runs into Olivia, a girl he liked in high school, and her older neighbor Antonella. When Joe sees an empty restaurant for rent, he decides he wants to open his own place there. He'll call it Enoteca Maria after his mother, and the special thing about it will be that only grandmothers work as the cooks.
Even though some local people don't like his idea, Joe goes ahead with his plan. He gets Bruno to help fix up the restaurant space to look like a classic Italian place. He hires four grandmothers to be his cooks – Antonella, his mother's best friend Roberta, her old hairdresser Gia, and a woman named Teresa who just walked in looking for work. At first the grandmothers don't get along because they're from different parts of Italy and cook differently. But after Gia invites them all to her hair salon for a fun day together, they become friends.
While the grandmothers are working on the menu, Roberta tries to make a dish called capuzzelle and accidentally starts a fire in the kitchen. This happens right before the health inspector comes to check the restaurant. The Inspector fails them because of the fire damage and tells Joe it might be a whole year before he can get another inspection. Joe and Bruno get into a big fight about this and Joe kicks Bruno out.
Later Joe goes to say sorry to Bruno and finds out that Bruno sold his special car that he got from his father to help pay for the restaurant work. Joe feels bad about how good a friend Bruno is and they make up. Olivia, who works as a lawyer, tracks down the health inspector and finds out he's been doing bad things. She makes him come do another inspection right away. This time the restaurant passes and they can finally open.
On opening night, a huge storm hits and nobody comes to eat at the restaurant except Bruno and Stella. Later they find out that one of the vendors at the market has been telling people bad things about the restaurant, which is why no customers are coming. Joe tries to get a famous food critic named Edward Durant to come review his restaurant, but Durant says no because he only writes about fancy Manhattan restaurants.
After weeks of no customers, Joe sadly decides he has to close the restaurant. As a last party, he invites all his friends, coworkers, and other people he knows for one final dinner. Everyone loves the food. Joe finally opens an envelope his mother left him that he was too scared to read before. Inside are all the recipes for his mother's and grandmother's dishes, including the Sunday gravy he could never figure out.
Joe goes back to his regular job, but a few days later Bruno comes to see him with a newspaper. It turns out one of the people at the final dinner was actually a food critic that Durant had sent secretly. The critic wrote a great review of the restaurant, and now lots of people want to eat there. The restaurant becomes successful, Joe makes enough money to buy Bruno's car back for him, and Joe and Olivia start dating. At the end of the movie, they show scenes from the real restaurant, which has been open for 15 years and now has grandmothers from all over the world working there.
I watched Nonnas on Netflix and it's exactly what you'd expect – a nice, easy movie that makes you feel good. Vince Vaughn plays Joe and he's much quieter than usual. He doesn't do his normal fast-talking thing. Instead he plays a sad man who really misses his mom. The problem is the movie doesn't really show us enough about why Joe loved his mom and grandmother so much. We see some quick scenes from when he was a kid, but it's not enough to make us understand why he's so upset.
The best parts of the movie are the grandmothers. Susan Sarandon plays Gia the hairdresser, Lorraine Bracco plays Roberta, and Talia Shire plays Teresa. These women are all good actresses and they make you believe they're really friends. At first they fight about how to cook things because they're from different parts of Italy, but then they become close. It's sweet to watch.
The movie has some big problems with how restaurants actually work. Joe doesn't hire any waiters or dishwashers or bartenders – just the four grandmothers. He doesn't invite his friends and family for opening night, which is what most new restaurants do. He only puts an ad in the Yellow Pages and expects people to find him. It's pretty silly when you think about it. The movie tries to fix this by having Joe finally invite everyone for what he thinks is the last night, and then magically one of them turns out to be a food critic. It's the kind of lucky thing that only happens in movies.
One really annoying thing about this movie is how dark it is. I had trouble seeing what was happening in a lot of scenes. There's one part where Olivia has to read some books and I was worried she'd hurt her eyes because the lighting was so bad. I don't know why they made everything so dim.
The movie talks a lot about Italian-American culture and whether you call tomato sauce "gravy" or "sauce." Different families call it different things and the movie gets this right. Some people might think the movie shows too many Italian stereotypes, but it feels like it comes from a place of love for the culture. The food looks good and the idea of grandmothers sharing their recipes is nice.
Nonnas is not a great movie but it's not trying to be. It's like a warm hug or a comfort meal. You know exactly what's going to happen but that's okay. It's the kind of movie you can watch while you're doing other things and you'll still enjoy it. If you like movies about family and food and people being nice to each other, you'll probably like this. If you want something more exciting or surprising, this isn't for you.
The movie works best when it focuses on the relationships between the grandmothers and how they help each other. It doesn't work as well when it tries to be realistic about running a business or when it tries to make us cry about Joe's grief. Vince Vaughn does a good job being more serious than usual, but the movie needed to show us more about his family relationships to make us really care.
Overall, Nonnas is a perfectly fine movie that delivers exactly what it promises. It's sweet, predictable, and comforting. It's a nice way to spend two hours if you're in the mood for something gentle and warm.
Nonnas is loosely based on the true story of Joe Scaravella, who founded Staten Island's Enoteca Maria, a real restaurant where grandmothers ("nonnas") from different cultures, cook traditional meals - a concept inspired by his late mother and grandmother. While the film captures the restaurant's emotional origins and struggles (like health inspections and financial hurdles), it takes creative liberties, exaggerating conflicts between the nonnas and adding fictional elements like a romance and a last-minute food critic saving the day. The core idea honoring family through food is authentic, but many details are dramatized for the movie. For the full story, visiting the real Enoteca Maria (still open today!) or checking out Scaravella's cookbook (Nonna's House) would give a more accurate picture.
Watch on Netflix