Nonnas tells a heartwarming story about true events. It all started with a love of traditional Italian family home cooking and evolved into a restaurant where all the cooks were real nonnas (grandmothers).

Vince Vaughan stars as Joe Scaravella. He loved his Italian grandmother’s cooking, he loved his mother’s cooking. He never married and lived in the apartment under his mother’s apartment. When she died, he felt lost.

His good friends Bruno (Joe Manganiello) and Stella (Drea de Matteo) urged him to change his routine. Paint the house, get a hobby. What he did was go to Staten Island and visit a farmers’ market. He needed fresh ingredients to try to recreate his nonnas recipes.

At the farmer’s market he met Antonella (Brenda Vaccaro) arguing with a vendor over tomatoes. A nonna! Then he realized she was with his high school crush Olivia (Linda Cardellini).

Wandering around Staten Island he spotted an empty restaurant for sale. He had the brainstorm to open a restaurant with a family atmosphere where the cooking was done by real nonnas.

The thing is, Joe knew absolutely nothing about running either a restaurant or running a business. All he had was determination and some money from his mother’s insurance.

He advertised on Craigslist for nonnas. Two showed up: Roberta (Lorraine Bracco) who was a feisty Sicilian, and Teresa (Talia Shire), a former nun. Antonella agreed to help. He hired them all. He recruited Gia (Susan Sarandon) as the pastry chef and they started working on the building and the recipes.

There were hundreds of obstacles in the way of opening the restaurant – most of them involving money Joe didn’t have. There was also a problem with getting people through the door to try out the food once it did open.

There was a slow burn romance between Joe and Olivia running through the work of getting started.

Of course, because there’s a movie about this true story, you know from the start that the place will be a success eventually. And it is. During the credits you see the real people involved in the restaurant, plus the long term story of the restaurant and all the nonnas who came later.

If you ask a person my age if they want to see a movie with Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire, Susan Sarandon, and Brenda Vaccaro as the main characters the answer is going to be a big YES! If you include that they will have food fights, get drunk on limoncello, and start fires with flaming goat heads then the answer is DOUBLE YES. What I’m saying is I loved the cast.

The movie is heartwarming and fun. It’s the kind of film that leaves you with a smile on your face, made more special because it’s based on real people who found a way to spread love with food. If you haven’t seen the trailer, take a look. You can see the film on Netflix.

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you watch it. The comments are open.