Stars: Edoardo Ballerini, Danny Aiello, Vivian Wu, Mike McGlone, Sandra Bernhard, John Corbett, Summer Phoenix, Mark Margolis, Polly Draper, Kirk Acevedo

Director: Bob Giraldi

Summary: Louis owns an upmarket restaurant in New York where one of his sons, Udo has just taken the job as head chef. His other son Danny owes a lot of money to a group of gangsters and the ownership of the restaurant is in jeopardy unless Danny can pay up...

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 restauranteur 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 as a snotty food critic.

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Set in an elegant, but hectic, New York restaurant over the course of a highly eventful evening, Dinner Rushis 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 Rushcontains 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

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Making-of - 1. THE MAKING OF DINNER RUSH, Featurette - 1. THE FAMOUS NEW YORKER, Original Theatrical Trailer, Scene Access, Interactive Menus
Year:	2000
Release Date:	March 10, 2003
Runtime:	98 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P 9043 D V D
Keywords:	Dinner, Rush, Comedy, General, Wide, Screen
Genre:	Comedy