Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Price of Nonna’s Inheritance’ on Netflix, a Lazy Comedy That’ll Grate on Your Nerves

The Price of Nonna’s Inheritance reassembles the dysfunctional family from The Price of Family, an Italian comedy that was apparently enough of a Netflix “hit” to warrant a sequel. The first film cast Christian De Sica and Angela Finocchiaro as parents who devised a silly fake scheme about inheriting six million bucks in order to get their two adult children to spend more time with them. Spoiler alert: The gist of the twist was, Grandma ends up with the dough, which is where we pick up this even more ridiculous story.

THE PRICE OF NONNA’S INHERITANCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Anna (Finocchiaro) has this ex, see, and he’s a greasy one. His name is Nunzio (Antonino Bruschetta), and you’ll trust him like you would a hungry snake circling a nest of baby chicks. He tries to seduce Anna, but she’s generally happily married for decades to Carlo (De Sica), I guess. They’re a little blase as a couple but whatever, Nunzio is no improvement – all he has to offer Anna is a sense of loosey-goosey adventure that nobody wants when you’re deep into late-middle-age. Through some convolution of plot that isn’t worth getting into (something about Nunzio needing actors for a goddamn terrible play he’s producing) Nunzio ends up courting Anna’s mother Giuliana (Fioretta Mari), and by “courting” I mean “sexually pleasuring.” I’m not sure what Anna finds more disturbing about their relationship – the unholy physical commingling or the fact that she knows Nunzio well enough to realize he’s angling for her mother’s six million bucks.

Of course, Anna and Carlo don’t want to see Nunzio rip Giuliana off. That would be upsetting. Especially considering they’re in line to inherit that six million, and their adult offspring kinda need-slash-want that money sooner rather than later – Alessandra’s (Dharma Mangia Woods) tea shop is deep in the red, and Emilio (Claudio Colica) is a jobless sort who’s mired in a totally hilarious bout of depression. When Giuliana announces that she and Nunzio are going to Valencia to get married, everyone gets upset: The family knows this is Nunzio’s surest shot at the fortune, and everyone watching the movie realizes this is another stinking rotten lousy dumbass destination-wedding comedy. Haven’t we seen roughly 300 of these things already this year?

Anyway, Anna and Carlo and Alessandra and Emilio all decide that the easiest way to thwart the marriage is to kill Nunzio. They have four days in Valencia prior to the wedding to figure out how to off the guy. They tromp through the woods looking for a poisonous plant that’ll make it look like a heart attack, they contemplate pushing off a cliff, they wonder how they can stage a phony suicide – all about as totally hilarious as Emilio’s chronic melancholy. Meanwhile, Anna has to listen to her mother and Nunzio having intercourse very loudly in the neighboring suite, and every plan they concoct meets with complications ranging from oh-shit-there-are-security-cameras-everywhere to Nunzio’s-best-pal-overheard-us-making-idiotic-plans to Emilio-fell-asleep-on-the-poisonous-plant-and-now-has-a-big-infected-lump-on-his-shoulder, and other assorted idiocies. So the question is, will they go through with it, or what? 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Nonna’s Inheritance is like Ticket to Paradise crossed with a tongue-in-cheek Hitchcock dark comedy like The Trouble with Harry – albeit a fraction as funny.

Performance Worth Watching: De Sica, Bruschetta and Finocchiaro are veteran actors of dozens of Italian productions who surely know a paycheck gig when they see one. I’ll leave it at that. 

Memorable Dialogue: Anna: “This makes me incredibly sad, you know? That we can’t even come together as a family to commit a murder.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I think the central joke here is, Anna and co. are too stupid and incompetent to accomplish anything, and that would deflate the film’s will-they-or-won’t-they tension, if it bothered to generate any, which it doesn’t. The Price of Nonna’s Inheritance suffers from a lack of urgency, which doesn’t pair very well with its lack of viable comedy or the fact that all of these characters are tiresome shitheads who don’t inspire our allegiance or sympathy whatsoever.

“I have a shit-in-law” is the extent of the witty dialogue here, and the situations play out in a laconic fashion that accurately reflects the beachy setting but doesn’t work in a comedy that should be a dalliance, a snappy, joke-heavy distraction. It has all the stuff of a black comedy except the sharp teeth this brand of humor needs to be effective or memorable. And you know what happens when you make jokes about murdering people and crippling depression that aren’t funny? Well, it’s usually tasteless and wrongheaded, but this movie shows so little energy or ambition, you can’t even get angry at it. 

Our Call: The price of watching this movie is your time, which is too precious to waste on this one. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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