"Family's where you act the worst, but are loved the best."
Hello everyone!
The last movie review of 2022, ladies and gentlemen, and although I wish I would have picked something a little more my speed in terms of how much I enjoyed it, this one still nails a couple of points along the way.
I knew it was going to be like this, however.
The first two movies of the review-show were much too good to be true, so naturally the follow-up was NEVER going to live up to the hype!
Ah well.
You win some, you lose some, right?
So without further ado, let's jump right into the holiday search for a delicious Italian sugo, as well as some common family decency, with Our Italian Christmas Memories.
Our Italian Christmas Memories covers a couple of topics - probably too many, if you ask me - and stars Beau Bridges and Sarah Powers, the latter of whom I LOVED in the Good Witch series, so I was naturally going to have a look at this purely on the basis of that.
Now, Sarah plays Anna, an adjunct professor who's finally home again after who knows how long of travelling wherever the job takes her, and she discovers that, surprise surprise, her grandfather's Alzheimer's has taken a SEVERE hit.
Considering she hasn't been home for a bit it's natural that she needs to catch up quickly, but of course things are rarely that easy.
See, the mom - her father's primary caretaker - is going on vacation to Hawaii, and Anna's going to be in charge of her grandfather while she's away. This, and the fact that she's been away for quite some time, puts her at odds with her younger sister Ella, whose wife is pregnant with their first child, and younger brother RJ, who consistently feels like a failure.
Now, Anna does her best to provide support for RJ, while he struggles at his new job at a restaurant in town (which he actually bails out on because, pressure, but this gets resolved through the movie and is more a blip in the grand scheme of things), but she and Ella remain at logger-heads.
Mostly because Ella's a bitch, but you didn't hear that one coming from me. No, wait, you did.
See, while I understand that she's being all hissy because she needs her older sister, that's some STRANGE way of showing it, rather than discussing things like adults, particularly as another trait of Ella's we discover during the movie is that she loves to avoid confrontation by dropping bombshells in such situations that prevent outright conflicts because she counts on the fact people will be too embarrassed to push.
This is why she drops the 'oh we're selling the family farm' in such a way that it makes Anna incapable of even getting a word in edge-wise, though her grandfather does comfort her later by saying that his daughter and granddaughter do have his blessing for it.
The MAIN plot, however, is of course the Alzheimer's, which also brings a love interest into Anna's life in the form of handsome Dr. Greg, taking care of her grandfather, and of course there are the usual holiday shenanigans of helping him bake cookies for a charity sale and whatnot.
However, through it all, Anna is searching for her grandmother's sugo recipe, thinking that it might help engage her grandfather a little bit, which brings up a lot of memories that the old man shares with her along the way, including but not limited to just how they bought the farm and where they lived for the first few years.
Things come to a first head at RJ's big restaurant thing (which he fails at, but as mentioned earlier, it all evens out) when Ella again shows she's trying to avoid needing to talk things out directly and just bully everyone into her way as she presses, in the middle of the restaurant, for them to make decisions regarding their grandfather.
Uhm, I'm sorry, bitch, for one the primary caretaker is NOT here so it's moot point, and for another you don't do this in public.
Her wife is useless, too. If you can't detour your partner from cratering so hard, then you best just pack up since all you're doing is supporting their solo war or whatever it is. I absolutely LOATHE the character of Ella and no, I'm not afraid to say so out loud.
Things come to a SECOND, tenser head, however, when grandpa doesn't come back from his morning walk one morning - thankfully Anna remembers the location of that first apartment and they manage to get him home, but not before nearly biting Ella's head off because, newsflash, Ella, the sugo thing was ACTUALLY helping, rather than your bitching.
Anyway, Anna ends up finding the recipe in her grandmother's cardigan, so she frames it for the family, and they patch things up, hosting their traditional Christmas dinner with Dr. Greg in special attendance because, well, romance! The one bright point in this entire movie.
Anna also tells the family she's looking into a permanent position close to home so she can help out, and the movie ends on that high note.
But MAN was it a doozy.
RJ's subplot was practically useless and could have been chopped easily - I skimmed through it - and Ella's was eh. It COULD have been done well, but the writing turned the character into a Grade A Biatch so, I'm not a fan.
The only light in this convoluted darkness was the romance between Anna and Greg, which I thought was cute and not overbearing, but then again the Alzheimer's ... woof.
I miscalculated badly. As someone who lived in the same house with an Alzheimer's patient, I can tell you I avoid movies on the topic like the plague. I don't need to see it - I lived it. When the person doesn't recognize their own youngest son simply because they're wearing clothes they don't usually wear at home, you know it's bad.
So I say to you: watch this with caution. It IS heartwarming, and it DOES bring several messages about family to the fore.
But it's also quite difficult, if you've been there. And it's okay to admit that, too.
xx
*images and video not mine
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