Thursday, June 05, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: The dough also rises

The Bread, My Sweet is a big fat pile of carb overload

By Jeannette Catsoulis

With the recent cancellation of the thunderingly awful TV sitcom "My Big Fat Greek Life," the fragile hope that we were witnessing the death rattle of all things Big and Fat began to stir in the multiplexes of America. But just when we thought it was safe to venture once more into the darkness, here comes The Bread, My Sweet--an Italian-themed movie so dire that its national release is entirely beholden to its Greek predecessor.

Scott Baio plays Dominic, a Pittsburgh corporate raider-cum-pastry chef (already he sounds too good to be true). By day he fires people and bitches about their snack choices; by dawn he runs a pastry shop with his two brothers, loverboy Eddie (Billy Mott) and retarded Pino (Shuler Hensley). Above the shop live their landlords, Bella (Rosemary Prinz) and her potty-mouthed, one-legged husband (John Seitz). When Bella develops terminal cancer, Dominic quits his job and decides to make her happy by persuading her sourpuss Peace Corps daughter Lucca (Kristin Minter, who played the sullen front-desk clerk Randi on "E.R.") to marry him.

Mauling our heartstrings with scenes of unsurpassed tackiness--a hysterical Pino making tiny pies for Bella's challenged digestion, a mysterious dancing gypsy--Melissa Martin's directorial debut is a cannoli stuffed with painful ethnic stereotypes and some of the worst dialogue ever committed to film. The Olive Garden probably will screen it around the clock.