The Spitfire Grill was a hit with me when it came out almost 30 years ago. It made a big impression on me. I remembered almost all the plot twists watching it again all these years later. There will be spoilers ahead.

The Spitfire Grill was a heartwarming, tearjerker kind of movie. You were rooting for the characters and wanted them to succeed. It used so many tropes to tell the story. I didn’t notice them back in 1996, but they bothered me this time through.

Hannah (Ellen Burstyn) lived in Gilead, Maine. She ran a small cafe called The Spitfire Grill. Into her life walked ex-con Percy (Alison Elliott), who just got out of a Maine prison where she’d worked answering phones for the Maine tourist bureau. She fell in love with Maine in the process.

Percy was sent to Gilead with instructions to see Sheriff Walsh (Gailard Sartain) about a job. He convinced Hannah to put Percy to work. Hannah’s nephew Nahum (Will Patton) was very suspicious of the girl just out of prison. He’d been trying to sell the grill for Hannah for almost 10 years.

Hannah conveniently broke her leg about then, and Percy had to take over running the grill. She was a terrible cook.

Nahum’s wife Shelby (Marcia Gay Harden) stepped up and starting doing the cooking. She taught Percy as she went along. She was the one who learned all of Percy’s backstory.

When Percy heard that Hannah couldn’t find a buyer for the grill, she told Shelby about an essay contest she learned about while in prison. People send in $100 as an entry fee along with an essay about why they wanted to own the grill. The winner of the essay contest gets the grill and Hannah gets all the entry fees.

There was a subplot about a mysterious man that Hannah gave canned food to at night. Percy was very curious about him and started following him and trying to engage him in conversation.

Nahum’s interest in the money Hannah was collecting from all the essay letters was another subplot.

The worst trope of all was that (spoiler) Percy dies. Her sacrifice to save someone brings the town together to celebrate the new owner of the grill, brings the mystery man down out of the hills, and leaves the audience in tears.

I’d forgotten the manipulation of killing off Percy from my first watch. Didn’t like it so I blanked it out. She was such a spunky spitfire herself, I really liked her character. Her mere presence was enough to change the town, she didn’t need to die. Sadly, even more recently written material often uses the idea of killing off a favorite character.

Even with that awful outcome for Percy, I enjoyed watching this movie again. I responded as intended to all the emotional twists and felt moved when it was over. Seeing favorite actors like Ellen Burstyn and Marcia Gay Harden as much younger women was a fun reminder of all the years I’ve enjoyed these two brilliant actors.

The film is available on Tubi, Plex, and Roku Channel. Let me know if you watch it again, and what you thought of it the second time around.