• Latest
  • Trending
The Italians Review

The Italians Review: A Comedic Surface, Existential Depths

Without a Dawn Review

Without a Dawn Review: Introspection in a Cabin of Shadows

The Correspondent Review

The Correspondent Review: Richard Roxburgh’s Tour de Force

Bogieville Review

Bogieville Review: Low-Budget Ingenuity and Flawed Execution

Slow Horses

Slow Horses Rides Back on 24 September With Season 5

10 hours ago
A Minecraft Movie

SXSW Panel Reveals How Minecraft Movie Crafted a $948 M Blockbuster

10 hours ago
Ollie Madden

Netflix Poaches Film4 Chief Ollie Madden to Supercharge U.K. Movie Slate

10 hours ago
Mariska Hargitay

Hargitay’s ‘My Mom Jayne’ Lifts the Curtain on a Hollywood Tragedy

10 hours ago
Aureole – Wings of Hope Review

Aureole – Wings of Hope Review: Precision Platforming with a Divine Twist

Coastal Review

Coastal Review: Intimate Performances, Tepid Momentum

The Dark Money Game

The Dark Money Game Review: How Secret Funds Warped Democracy

Call of the Void Review

Call of the Void Review: Atmospheric Chills and Lingering Questions

Dovey's Promise Review

Dovey’s Promise Review: One Woman’s Stand Against Injustice

  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Gazettely Review Guidelines
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
GAZETTELY
  • Home
  • Movie and TV News
    Slow Horses

    Slow Horses Rides Back on 24 September With Season 5

    A Minecraft Movie

    SXSW Panel Reveals How Minecraft Movie Crafted a $948 M Blockbuster

    Ollie Madden

    Netflix Poaches Film4 Chief Ollie Madden to Supercharge U.K. Movie Slate

    Mariska Hargitay

    Hargitay’s ‘My Mom Jayne’ Lifts the Curtain on a Hollywood Tragedy

    frankenstein 2025

    Fans Push for Big-Screen Run After Netflix Drops Frankenstein Teaser

    Blake Lively Justin Baldoni

    Judge Faces New Twist as Lively Seeks to Trim Lawsuit Against Baldoni

    Jacob Elordi

    Elordi’s POW Drama Leads to Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights

    Paramount

    Paramount Sets July 2 Shareholder Meeting as Skydance Vote Looms

    Maggie Lawson

    Psych Alum Maggie Lawson to Lead CBS’s Boston Blue

  • Movie and TV Reviews
    The Correspondent Review

    The Correspondent Review: Richard Roxburgh’s Tour de Force

    Bogieville Review

    Bogieville Review: Low-Budget Ingenuity and Flawed Execution

    Coastal Review

    Coastal Review: Intimate Performances, Tepid Momentum

    The Dark Money Game

    The Dark Money Game Review: How Secret Funds Warped Democracy

    Call of the Void Review

    Call of the Void Review: Atmospheric Chills and Lingering Questions

    Dovey's Promise Review

    Dovey’s Promise Review: One Woman’s Stand Against Injustice

    The Balcony Movie Review

    The Balcony Movie Review: A Philosophical Perch on Human Transience

    What It Feels Like for a Girl Season 1 Review

    What It Feels Like for a Girl Season 1 Review: Before Trans Visibility Had a Name

    Bullet Train Explosion Review

    Bullet Train Explosion Review: Bureaucracy, Bombs, and the Weight of Duty

  • Game Reviews
    Without a Dawn Review

    Without a Dawn Review: Introspection in a Cabin of Shadows

    Aureole – Wings of Hope Review

    Aureole – Wings of Hope Review: Precision Platforming with a Divine Twist

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Brushes with Death Review

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Brushes with Death Review: A Painter’s Tale in Bohemia

    Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo Review

    Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo Review: Guiding Spirits with Style and Sincerity

    Blacksmith Master Review

    Blacksmith Master Review: The Satisfying Grind of Metal and Management

    Labyrinth Of The Demon King Review

    Labyrinth Of The Demon King Review: Unforgiving, Unforgettable Horror

    Cubic Odyssey Review

    Cubic Odyssey Review: An Ambitious Architect’s Space Dream

    Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Review

    Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Review: A Song of Systems and Sorrows

    To a T Review

    To a T Review: Finding Perfection in an Imperfect Shape

  • The Bests
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Movie and TV News
    Slow Horses

    Slow Horses Rides Back on 24 September With Season 5

    A Minecraft Movie

    SXSW Panel Reveals How Minecraft Movie Crafted a $948 M Blockbuster

    Ollie Madden

    Netflix Poaches Film4 Chief Ollie Madden to Supercharge U.K. Movie Slate

    Mariska Hargitay

    Hargitay’s ‘My Mom Jayne’ Lifts the Curtain on a Hollywood Tragedy

    frankenstein 2025

    Fans Push for Big-Screen Run After Netflix Drops Frankenstein Teaser

    Blake Lively Justin Baldoni

    Judge Faces New Twist as Lively Seeks to Trim Lawsuit Against Baldoni

    Jacob Elordi

    Elordi’s POW Drama Leads to Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights

    Paramount

    Paramount Sets July 2 Shareholder Meeting as Skydance Vote Looms

    Maggie Lawson

    Psych Alum Maggie Lawson to Lead CBS’s Boston Blue

  • Movie and TV Reviews
    The Correspondent Review

    The Correspondent Review: Richard Roxburgh’s Tour de Force

    Bogieville Review

    Bogieville Review: Low-Budget Ingenuity and Flawed Execution

    Coastal Review

    Coastal Review: Intimate Performances, Tepid Momentum

    The Dark Money Game

    The Dark Money Game Review: How Secret Funds Warped Democracy

    Call of the Void Review

    Call of the Void Review: Atmospheric Chills and Lingering Questions

    Dovey's Promise Review

    Dovey’s Promise Review: One Woman’s Stand Against Injustice

    The Balcony Movie Review

    The Balcony Movie Review: A Philosophical Perch on Human Transience

    What It Feels Like for a Girl Season 1 Review

    What It Feels Like for a Girl Season 1 Review: Before Trans Visibility Had a Name

    Bullet Train Explosion Review

    Bullet Train Explosion Review: Bureaucracy, Bombs, and the Weight of Duty

  • Game Reviews
    Without a Dawn Review

    Without a Dawn Review: Introspection in a Cabin of Shadows

    Aureole – Wings of Hope Review

    Aureole – Wings of Hope Review: Precision Platforming with a Divine Twist

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Brushes with Death Review

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Brushes with Death Review: A Painter’s Tale in Bohemia

    Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo Review

    Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo Review: Guiding Spirits with Style and Sincerity

    Blacksmith Master Review

    Blacksmith Master Review: The Satisfying Grind of Metal and Management

    Labyrinth Of The Demon King Review

    Labyrinth Of The Demon King Review: Unforgiving, Unforgettable Horror

    Cubic Odyssey Review

    Cubic Odyssey Review: An Ambitious Architect’s Space Dream

    Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Review

    Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Review: A Song of Systems and Sorrows

    To a T Review

    To a T Review: Finding Perfection in an Imperfect Shape

  • The Bests
No Result
View All Result
GAZETTELY
No Result
View All Result
The Italians Review

Autobiography Review: A Masterclass in Creeping Dread

Blacksmith Master Review: The Satisfying Grind of Metal and Management

Home Entertainment Movies

The Italians Review: A Comedic Surface, Existential Depths

Naser Nahandian by Naser Nahandian
1 day ago
in Entertainment, Movies, Reviews
Reading Time: 5 mins read
A A
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on PinterestShare on WhatsAppShare on Telegram

“The Italians” ushers us into the familiar, yet perpetually unsettling, theater of an Italian-American family. Here, young Nico performs the timeless ritual: presenting his new love, Lily, to the dynastic heart of his kin, chiefly his mother, Angelina. The film sketches its initial strokes with the broad colors of comedy, for Lily is an inventory of Angelina’s unspoken disapprovals.

She is not of their tribe, a vegetarian in a pantheon of meat, a divorcee bearing the mark of a past life, and disinclined towards the expected lineage of children. The air, thick with the aroma of simmering sauces and louder pronouncements, promises a light, chaotic ballet of domestic discord.

Yet, beneath the laughter, one senses the ancient hum of cultural imperatives, the invisible architecture of belonging that can both nurture and confine, where the weight of generations presses silently upon the present moment.

The Confessional and the Feast: Narratives of Entrapment

The narrative itself seeks a kind of absolution, framed by the hushed confines of a confessional booth. Nico, Angelina, and her husband Vincenzo unspool their recent histories to the patient Father Joe, a structural choice that casts their domestic farces as acts already freighted with the need for reconciliation, or perhaps, resignation.

This filtered recollection paints the introduction of Lily not merely as a social call, but as a disruption to a carefully curated ecosystem. Angelina’s immediate recoil from Lily—a rejection rooted in Lily’s perceived deviations from the sacred script of Italian daughter-in-law—is the stone dropped into the family pond, its ripples spreading with an almost predetermined force.

The vegetarianism, the prior marriage, the ambivalence toward procreation: each is a negation of Angelina’s world, a small tear in the fabric of her expectations for her son’s life, and by extension, her own.

The ensuing days descend into a series of escalating comedies of discomfort, most notably around the ritual of the shared meal. These are not merely dinners; they are tribunals.

The re-emergence of Nico’s former girlfriend, Geena, a caricature of ostentatious Italian-ness, is a masterstroke of Angelina’s subtle warfare, a transparent maneuver that amplifies Lily’s alienation to an unbearable pitch, culminating in her flight from the table. Other relations orbit this central drama, their own quirks and allegiances adding to the cacophony, each a small testament to the intricate, often suffocating, dance of familial obligation.

Portraits in a Dimly Lit Room: Gazing Upon the Players

Angelina, as rendered by Michelle Danner, stands as the formidable matriarch, her domain the kitchen, her scepter the stirring spoon. She is a figure etched from tradition, her pronouncements less opinion than decree, her identity seemingly fused with the rituals of nourishment and the perpetuation of her lineage.

The Italians Review

Yet, through the cracks in this formidable facade, one might glimpse a deeper fragility, a quiet terror of erasure, her fierce traditionalism a bulwark against an encroaching, indifferent modernity. Is her control a manifestation of love, or a desperate clinging to known forms in a formless void?

Lily, embodied by Abigail Breslin, enters this dense atmosphere as the quintessential alien, a mirror reflecting the family’s own unspoken anxieties. Her attempts to navigate this labyrinth are a study in quiet resilience, her very presence a question mark against their certainties.

She is the vegetarian at the carnivore’s feast, the atheist in the shadow of the crucifix, a modern soul adrift in an ancestral sea. Her performance hints at an inner landscape, a private world of her own, making her attempts to connect, or simply endure, all the poignant.

Nico, the son, is the fulcrum of these opposing forces, a study in filial piety stretched taut by new affection, his efforts at mediation the quiet struggles of a man attempting to serve two irreconcilable deities. Vincenzo, the husband, observes with the weary eyes of one long accustomed to these tempests, his occasional interventions the sighs of a man who knows the limits of his influence.

The periphery is populated by figures like Lucia, the grandmother whose sharp wisdom echoes Angelina’s own, and Geena, the ex-girlfriend whose vibrant vulgarity serves as a stark, unsettling counterpoint to Lily’s composure. Father Joe listens, a receptacle for these tangled human admissions, while Sal, the brother, adds another thread to the dense familial weave.

Feasts of Obligation, Crumbs of Connection

The film ostensibly celebrates the tenacity of family bonds, the fierce loyalty that defines such clans. Yet, one cannot ignore the undercurrent of obligation, the unspoken contracts that bind individuals to roles scripted long before their arrival.

The Italians Review

The culture clash is not merely between Italian tradition and American modernity, but between the crushing weight of the collective and the fragile assertion of individual will. Lily’s struggle for acceptance is a quiet battle for the self, a plea to be seen beyond the categories imposed upon her.

Food, in this world, transcends mere sustenance; it is language, weapon, offering, and sacrament. Each meal is a stage for emotional warfare or tentative peace, where a plate of vegetarian pasta becomes a fragile olive branch, a tiramisu the repository of a hidden hope.

Yet, as the narrative veers from its comedic trajectory into the shadowed lands of marital strife and sudden illness—Angelina’s faltering heart—the laughter catches in the throat. This intrusion of mortality, of authentic suffering, strips away some of the performative layers.

It is in these moments, perhaps, that genuine connection flickers, born not of shared traditions but of shared vulnerability. The choice of love over rigid expectation is presented as a triumph, yet one wonders about the compromises made, the parts of the self eroded in the name of belonging. Is acceptance a true embrace, or merely the weary cessation of hostilities?

Framing the Familiar Cage

Michelle Danner’s dual role, as architect of this world and its central, formidable figure, invites contemplation on the artist’s relationship with their own heritage—a dance of critique and embrace. The film’s style, a broad comedy that knowingly deploys stereotypes, feels at times like a self-aware acknowledgment of these cultural shorthands, these masks worn for so long they have grafted onto the skin.

The Italians Review

There is warmth, undeniably, but it is the warmth of a hearth whose fire might also consume. The Ricci home, with its curated relics of lineage—the crest, the copper, the photographs—is less a lived-in space than a museum of identity, each object a testament to a past that continues to dictate the present.

The pacing, often brisk, mirrors the relentless momentum of family life, a current that sweeps individuals along. The eventual balance struck between humor and pathos feels like an attempt to find meaning in the mundane, a quiet assertion that even within the predictable confines of domestic drama, moments of fleeting grace, or perhaps just bearable existence, can be found. The film offers a familiar portrait, earnest in its depiction of the family cage, gilded though it may be.

The Italians Released on April 11, 2025, The Italians is available for streaming on various platforms.

Full Credits

Director: Michelle Danner

Writer: Lisa Phillips Visca

Producers and Executive Producers: Michelle Danner, Valerie Debler, Brian Drillinger, Alexandra Guarnieri, Teferi DeJene, Lisa Phillips Visca

Cast: Abigail Breslin, Matthew Daddario, Lainie Kazan, Rob Estes, Perrey Reeves, David DeLuise, Olivia Luccardi, Michelle Danner, Luca Riemma, Roger Gershman

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Federico Verardi

Editor: Teferi DeJene

Composer: Holly Amber Church

The Review

The Italians

6.5 Score

"The Italians" offers a familiar tableau of familial chaos, yet beneath its comedic veneer lie unsettling questions about the prisons of tradition and the fragile quest for selfhood within the collective. While its embrace of convention sometimes mutes its deeper resonances, the film occasionally allows a starker, more poignant human drama to surface, reminding us that even in the loudest rooms, the quiet anxieties of existence persist. It’s a cinematic meal that, while ostensibly comforting, leaves a lingering aftertaste of existential inquiry.

PROS

  • Moments that pierce through stereotype to reveal authentic human vulnerability.
  • Explores the profound, often burdensome, weight of cultural and familial expectations.
  • Michelle Danner's central performance embodies the tension between matriarchal strength and underlying fragility.
  • The shift towards dramatic themes introduces a welcome, if somber, depth.

CONS

  • Often leans heavily on familiar comedic tropes, blunting its sharper insights.
  • The narrative arc occasionally smooths over the very complexities it unearths.
  • Tonal shifts between farce and drama can feel abrupt rather than seamlessly integrated.
  • Predictable elements may detract from the unsettling questions it raises.

Review Breakdown

  • Overall 0
Tags: Abigail BreslinAll in FilmsComedyDavid DeLuiseDramaFamilyFeaturedLainie KazanMatthew DaddarioMichelle DannerOlivia LuccardiPerrey ReevesRob EstesThe Italians
Previous Post

Autobiography Review: A Masterclass in Creeping Dread

Next Post

Blacksmith Master Review: The Satisfying Grind of Metal and Management

Try AI Movie Recommender

Gazettely AI Movie Recommender

This Week's Top Reads

  • Mountainhead Review

    Mountainhead Review: Deepfakes and Deep Trouble

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Boglands Review: Shadows and Whispers in the Irish Mist

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Death Valley Review: A Witty Welsh Wander into Cosy Crime

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Librarians: The Next Chapter Season 1 Review – Bridging Eras with Spellbinding Charm

    25 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Better Sister Season 1 Review: Not Quite a Killer Thriller

    16 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • MobLand Season 1 Review: Family Ties and Underworld Intrigues

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Nine Puzzles Season 1 Review: Puzzle Pieces, Pain, and Police Procedurals

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Must Read Articles

Bullet Train Explosion Review
Movies

Bullet Train Explosion Review: Bureaucracy, Bombs, and the Weight of Duty

1 day ago
Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Review
Reviews Games

Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Review: A Song of Systems and Sorrows

3 days ago
Stick Season 1 Review
TV Shows

Stick Season 1 Review: Owen Wilson Drives a Heartfelt, Flawed Dramedy

3 days ago
Destination X Review
Entertainment

Destination X Review: A Game of Veiled Realities

4 days ago
Earnhardt Review
Entertainment

Earnhardt Review: The Anatomy of a NASCAR Titan

4 days ago
Loading poll ...
Coming Soon
Who is the best director in the horror thriller genre?

Gazettely is your go-to destination for all things gaming, movies, and TV. With fresh reviews, trending articles, and editor picks, we help you stay informed and entertained.

© 2021-2024 All Rights Reserved for Gazettely

What’s Inside

  • Movie & TV Reviews
  • Game Reviews
  • Featured Articles
  • Latest News
  • Editorial Picks

Quick Links

  • Home
  • About US
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise with Us
  • Review Guidelines

Follow Us

Facebook X-twitter Youtube Instagram
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Movies
  • Entertainment News
  • Movie and TV Reviews
  • TV Shows
  • Game News
  • Game Reviews
  • Contact Us

© 2024 All Rights Reserved for Gazettely

Go to mobile version