Welcome to Mama's (2022)

Lovely storyline mixing love of family, food and traditions, but falls a little flat in the Romance department. Although there's a mutual attraction between the two lead characters, there's no real chemistry. There was more affection shared between long time friends and colleagues Frank and Sal in the kitchen. The two main characters butt heads too often and settle for compromise more so than agree with the other when it comes to how to run the restaurant. Throughout the movie connections between Mama and Papa Tucci's loving relationship in the past are used to jumpstart or smooth over the roughness in Frank and Amy's current relationship. Which was a nice concept if you're trying to make a business work, because it did. But romantically it wasn't enough for me to believe that Amy and Frank would ever progress passed friendship. Given more time this mutual stubbornness might spark some passion between them, but in the timeframe of the movie their coming together as business partners/romantic partners seems forced. The actors did their best to resolve the storyline in the one and half hour run time, but to really do this story justice I believe it needed two parts to flesh out more content and to make it more satisfying for viewers. To borrow a concept used in the movie: I give it 7 forks out of 10.