Dinner Rush is gourmet cinema, served with a generous helping of culinary panache. After countless commercials, music videos (including Michael Jackson's "Beat It"), and a few obscure features, director and restaurateur Bob Giraldi casts his own New York eatery as a TriBeCa hot spot where the owner (Danny Aiello) presides over a busy night of fine dining and mob entanglements. He's been a bookmaker for 25 years but he's going legit; his son (Edoardo Ballerini) is a nuovo cuisine genius, eager to inherit the business; the sous-chef (Kirk Acevedo) is deeply in debt to mafia thugs; an art-dealer snob (Mark Margolis) is antagonizing his waitress (Summer Phoenix); a charming stranger (John Corbett) harbors a climactic surprise; and a powerful food critic (Sandra Bernhard) is ready to pounce on any wrong move. In perfect control of this bustling environment, Giraldi directs like a great chef cooks: with Altmanesque delicacy, confident that every ingredient is vital to the success of his creation. It's utterly delicious. --Jeff Shannon
(15 votes)
2.
Bob Giraldi, award-winning director of commercials and music videos (Michael Jackson's "Beat It"), uses his own restaurant--Gigino's Trattoria--as the starting point for his debut feature, DINNER RUSH. The film is about one lively night at a trendy restaurant in the TriBeCa area of New York City. Louis (Danny Aiello) is an aging bookie and restauranter who's bemoaning the transformation of Gigino's from a down-to-earth, mom-and-pop Italian eatery to a pretentious, see-and-be-seen establishment. Louis's talented son, Udo (Edoardo Ballerini), is an ambitious star chef who wants to take over the restaurant because he claims his food and his style are responsible for the success of the business. To make matters worse, Louis is confronted by a pair of thugs known as Black and Blue who murdered his partner and now want to take over his place. Mark Margolis is hilarious as the droll art critic and nightmare customer, Fitzgerald. Summer Phoenix plays a smart-talking waitress. And topping off the colorful cast is Sandra Bernhard who plays a snotty food critic.
(15 votes)
3.
New York's hottest eatery is going to have a killer night.
Things are really heating up at New York's hottest restaurant. Owner and bookie Louis Cropa (Danny Aiello) lost a friend to a mob hit and now his chef's gambling problem has brought the unwelcome mobsters into his restaurant. With an all-star cast including John Corbett (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and Sandra Bernhard, Dinner Rush serves up delicious surprises at every table. It's sure to be a night to remember.
(15 votes)
4.
Set in an elegant, but hectic, New York restaurant over the course of a highly eventful evening, Dinner Rush is a magnificent piece of ensemble playing--wholly satisfying from soup to nuts.
Danny Aiello stars as Louis, a bookmaker who also owns the restaurant but is dismayed that, under the aegis of his son and autocratic master chef Udo (Edoardo Ballerini) the kitchen serves up trendy nouvelle cuisine in place of the simple, hearty fare of its former "Mom and Pop" days. But that's just one of his worries. Harassed waitresses, pretentious diners, Sandra Bernhard's loud and abrasive restaurant critic all add to the stressed, overheated atmosphere. Then there's sous-chef Duncan, Louis's younger son, thousands of dollars in debt to bookies, who's got mixed up with a couple of hoods from Queens, determined to muscle in on Louis's restaurant business and have already shot dead his partner by way of an opening salvo in the negotiations. They're among tonight's diners.
And yet, much as ex-music video director Bob Giraldi beautifully orchestrates and intertwines this diverse and clashing set of stories and characters, so Louis exudes a certain quiet serenity that suggests that, despite the grease fires, tantrums, crises and strong-arming, everything¹s somehow going to turn out just fine. A minor but masterly piece of movie-making.
On the DVD: Dinner Rush contains a good number of extras. These included a (somewhat disjointed) interview with director Bob Giraldi, himself owner of ten restaurants in New York, a "making of" feature which includes the usual mutual back-slapping between cast and production team (though in this case deserved) and, most appealingly, recipes for some of the tremblingly delicious culinary dishes served up in the film. --David Stubbs
(15 votes)
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