THE BREAD, MY SWEET
(two stars)
Half-baked romance.
Running time: 101 minutes. Not rated (nothing objectionable). At the Cinema Village, 12th Street, west of Fifth Avenue.
DIRECTOR-writer Melissa Martin’s tearjerker “The Bread, My Sweet” is so well-meaning that you really wish it were a better movie.
But, alas, good intentions do not always a good movie make.
Dominic (Scott Baio, of “Happy Days”) is a first-generation Italian-American who, with his two brothers, runs a family bakery in an underprivileged area of Pittsburgh.
Bella (Rosemary Prinz) and Massimo (John Seitz), the little old Italian couple from Central Casting, live upstairs.
They raised Dominic and his brothers, and the three have never forgotten. The guys’ worlds revolve around the lovable old folks.
Then Bella is diagnosed with terminal cancer and is given just six months to live.
Her one wish is to be reunited with the couple’s wandering daughter, Lucca (Kristin Minter), who ran off to the Peace Corps after going to law school.
Dominic tracks her down, she comes home (on Christmas Eve, which will give you an idea of the movie’s schmaltz factor) – and Bella is happy.
But Dominick wants her even happier. So he and Lucca decide to get married.
Then, when the old lady has gone to that Great Bakery in the Sky, they can get a divorce.
The Italian-American family depicted by Martin exists only in the movies. (We should know.)
Real people don’t act and talk like this.
The whole subplot in which Dominic – in his spare time, no less – is a well-paid executive shark who has to fire people three days before Christmas is pointless.
And you know exactly how this thing is going to turn out before it’s even half over.