You know a movie's in trouble when Mark DeCarlo of The X Show infamy is the most engaging actor.
In what's billed as an Italian version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, co-writer Vincent Pagano plays Anthony, an actor from Rhode Island now living in LA with his girlfriend, Alissa, played by Victoria Rowell. When Anthony's grandfather dies, Anthony brings Alissa back home to meet his family who, up to that point, have no idea his girlfriend is black. What follows is all predictable—the family's shock, the constant eating and bickering with East Coast Italian accents and Anthony blowing a chance to prove his love for Alissa to la famiglia—despite director Rosario Roveto Jr.'s attempts to introduce some twists, such as an aunt with a much-younger boyfriend, cross-dressing brother Frankie (co-writer Mike Pagano, brother to Vincent) and a pair of dim-witted, wannabe wiseguy cousins, Brunie and Louie (co-writer Billy Van Zandt and husband of Adrienne Barbeau, who coincidently plays the aforementioned aunt; and John Mariano).
Come to think of it, you know a movie's in trouble when three of its four screenwriters are also starring, and everyone is related to everyone else.
The many vignettes are mildly entertaining on their own, but they come across as isolated and episodic, and the main plot of Anthony and Alissa's cross-culture-crossed romance isn't strong enough to support the weight. And while the studio would rather we think of Greek Wedding, what keeps coming to mind is an older, much more successful film, artistically: Moonstruck.
Despite the presence of so many Italians in the movie's creation, it seems that Moonstruck benefitted from the restraint of Irish outsider writer John Patrick Shanley (having a talented director like Norman Jewison at the helm certainly helped, too). Moonstruck was a loving look at Italian-American stereotypes, with vignettes hanging like charms from the sturdy bracelet of the main plot. Providence is the junk jewelry of stereotypes of Italian curses, gestures and red sauce.
It's DeCarlo as a gypsy cabdriver, with a pregnant Polish wife as his co-pilot, who steals each scene he's in and ultimately makes us more interested in his small tale than in the plot of the film we came to see.