Plants & Toscana

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Toscana (2022), Netflix’s Danish-Italian comfort drama about a stressed fine-dining chef who inherits his father’s restaurant in Tuscany and slowly rediscovers rustic cooking, unresolved family memories, and a wildly inconvenient romance.In this episodeThe tragic walking football update: a playoff final lost on penalties, after Sidey chose love and anniversary plans over footballDan’s gardening-inspired Top 5 theme: plants in film and televisionThe Day of the Triffids, Audrey II, Ents, Leon’s plant, Martian potatoes, Interstellar corn, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Batman’s blue flower, Cheech and Chong’s marijuana van, Tomacco, Swamp Thing, Groot, and Moriarty’s dead plantsReegs’ full crop of plant-film puns, including Chive Angry, Kill Dill, Mulch Ado About Nothing, Full Petal Jacket, and music by Sage Against the MachineSidey’s essential full English breakfast rules: beans on the plate, fried bread as gold standard, black pudding welcome, hash browns firmly under suspicionToscana’s dubbed-language confusion before Sidey realises the film is Danish, Italian and EnglishTheo Dahl’s sterile Danish fine-dining kitchen, tweezer food, a lost €9m investor, and a full meltdown at the passCris calling out the fantasy of a top chef personally cleaning the kitchenTheo’s inheritance trip to Tuscany, his battle with rustic food, suspect ice cubes, and unexpectedly excellent olive oilSophia, Pino, the wedding catering deal, and the film’s very convenient emotional geographyThe €500k/€900k sale gamble and Theo’s professional pride kicking inThe romance problem: Sophia is engaged, Pino seems perfectly sound, and Theo spends much of the film behaving like a potatoTheo rediscovering cooking “by feel” rather than by gram-perfect controlThe ending: sale completed, buy-back arranged, Danish chefs shipped to Tuscany, Sophia returns, and everyone apparently embraces rustic restaurant lifeBad Dads consensusScenery: gorgeousRuntime: painless and breezyPlot: extremely predictableFood content: oddly less visible than expectedRomance: not especially believablePino: treated very harshly by the filmTheo: hard to root for, despite the intended redemption arcOverall: watchable but thin — Dan and Cris found it easy to sit through, while Sidey wanted more charisma, chemistry and actual cookingYou can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads