Vince Vaughan, Lorraine Bracco are special sauce in good vibes Netflix comedy

Nobody ever cooked you better-tasting food than your grandmother. That’s true even if her skills were limited to a bowl of Rice Krispies. But if she came from a heritage that emphasized rich cuisine and homemade recipes passed down through generations, like, oh, I don’t know, Italians? Fuhgettaboutit. 

One must be forewarned not to press play on Netflix’s enjoyable new feature, Nonnas (streaming May 9), on an empty stomach. It’s all of three seconds before you’ll be looking at near-pornographic images of cannoli, zeppole, and, my favorite, chocolate-covered rainbow cookies mixed with almond paste with layers of raspberry jam. (Madonn’ what I’d do for a white box of those wrapped in string right now.) 

Then there’s a big Sunday meal with homemade pasta and tomato sauce (this is set in Brooklyn, not Jersey, so it’s definitely sauce, not “gravy”) and a triumphant lasagna presented in a white-and-blue CorningWare dish. Nonnas is to Italian food what Top Gun: Maverick is to fighter jets, and director Stephen Chbosky and cinematographer Florian Ballhaus have, if nothing else, done the impossible by creating a movie you can smell.

Luckily, it’s not just the pastries that are sweet. The film, loosely based on a true story, follows Joe Scaravella (Vince Vaughn) as a sensitive Brooklyn mechanic taking the grief of losing his mother and using it to create a restaurant that honors his family’s tradition. The gimmick of the place (and the movie) is that he won’t hire professional chefs — he’ll hire actual Italian grandmothers (nonnas) to do what they do best, cook from the heart. And also periodically scream “basta!” and create senior citizen mayhem while the soundtrack plays “Funniculi, Funniculà” and “The Tarantella.” 

Yes, this movie is corny as all hell, but the truth is I was sold before the first antipasto hit the table — and you would think I was chopping up onions myself the way my eyes got all misty watching Vince Vaughn (Vince Vaughn!??!) talk about his late mother and grandmother. Formulaic, dare-I-say-sappy movies, when done right, can be really good, and Nonnas is one such example. 

The main course of all this comes after introducing the four nonnas Joe hires, then letting them do their thing in the kitchen. The first is Lorraine Bracco’s Roberta, his mother’s best friend, a passionate Sicilian now raising hell in a nursing home. Then there’s Brenda Vaccaro’s Antonella, a Bolognese just as tough as Roberta, and the neighbor/mother figure to Olivia (Linda Cardellini), who happens to be Joe’s old high school flame. 

While Roberta and Antonella shout and curse at each other — at one point literally hurling tomatoes in anger (with Bracco using Italian bread as a bat to swat them away) — there’s balance from the stuttering calm of Talia Shire’s ex-nun Teresa, and finally Susan Sarandon as Gia, the Italian Blanche Devereaux, who naturally serves up dessert.

The central conflict of Nonnas is watching Joe’s bills pile up before his new venture takes off. By his side is Bruno (Joe Manganiello), a contractor who helps upgrade the old Staten Island dump he bought, and Bruno’s wife Stella (Drea de Matteo), whose primary function is to pronounce the word talk as “tawwukh” every few scenes.   

You’d have to be a little stunad to think a movie like this isn’t going to work out nicely, but with all these nice ingredients simmering, Nonnas ends up being a real treat. The best moments come from the specifics — the walks through the farmer’s market, close-ups of a blanched tomato, Roberta calling breadcrumbs “crumbs of bread,” and learning about capuzzelle, which is lamb’s head, that definitely looks a little questionable.

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I will call this movie out, however, for a bit of bad New York geography. Joe and Bruno are supposed to live in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, but the restaurant is in Staten Island. Yes, it is far more photogenic for them to take the Staten Island Ferry, but that’s a million miles out of the way. Take the Verrazzano! Which gavone mapped this out?

Did this annoy me? Yes. Did I get over it the second I shouted at the screen? I didn’t mean any disrespect. Pass the scungilli, it’s made with 16 cloves of garlic. Grade B+