Books, Arts & Manners: Appetizing and Otherwise

THE joint writing effort of Stanley Tucci and his cousin Joseph Tropiano, and the joint directorial debut of Tucci and Campbell Scott, yield Big Night, a hugely likable little movie about two Italian brothers trying to make it in the restaurant business in America. Secondo, the younger brother, who is the front man at the Paradise (somewhere in New York or New Jersey, sometime in the Forties or Fifties), has been here longer; Primo, the older brother and chef, is a more recent arrival. But for all Secondo’s charm and Primo’s great cooking, it may soon be Paradise lost.

Why? Perhaps because the cuisine is too authentic. Or because the brothers lack sufficient funds. Or because nearby there is Pascal’s unimaginative but glitzy restaurant, with all the most obvious dishes, a lounge singer, and staff galore. At the Paradise, there is, besides the brothers, only young Cristiano, kitchen boy, waiter, factotum. Secondo is quite an entrepreneur, and Primo is an artist, but for their thinning pocketbook it is all cuisine minceur.

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John Simon

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THE joint writing effort of Stanley Tucci and his cousin Joseph Tropiano, and the joint directorial debut of Tucci and Campbell Scott, yield Big Night, a hugely likable little movie about two Italian brothers trying to make it in the restaurant business in America. Secondo, the younger brother, who is the front man at the Paradise (somewhere in New York or New Jersey, sometime in the Forties or Fifties), has been here longer; Primo, the older brother and chef, is a more recent arrival. But for all Secondo’s charm and Primo’s great cooking, it may soon be Paradise lost.

Why? Perhaps because the cuisine is too authentic. Or because the brothers lack sufficient funds. Or because nearby there is Pascal’s unimaginative but glitzy restaurant, with all the most obvious dishes, a lounge singer, and staff galore. At the Paradise, there is, besides the brothers, only young Cristiano, kitchen boy, waiter, factotum. Secondo is quite an entrepreneur, and Primo is an artist, but for their thinning pocketbook it is all cuisine minceur.