"Turnover" wants to be a warm, fluffy slice-of-life piece of pie. You know this sort of cinematic concoction: a little bit sweet, a little bit sour, you'll laugh, you'll cry, and after it's over you'll think about being a little bit nicer of a person... even if it's just for a little while.
And it is that -- just not a very tasty version. The recipe's OK, and the cast is likable and nice to hang around with, but somewhere on the way from menu to table things went seriously awry.
Paul Guilfoyle plays Peter, the owner of a small but successful French cafe. You probably recognize Guilfoyle's face but not his name -- he's been a steadily working character actor for decades, largely playing authority figures. He's 70ish and looks it, with a friendly, craggy face and sensitive eyes.
This film has a lot of visual and logic flaws, and one is that Peter seems quite old, but we learn that he has a young son who's maybe 9, and an ex-wife, Fran (Kat Kramer), much younger than he. That's fine, but I like when a movie bothers to explain little incongruities like this.
Henry (Riker Lynch) is the young go-getter who actually runs the place, and Peter has promised to let him start a franchise -- in Las Vegas, of all places. But Fran butts in to elbow Henry out behind Peter's back, so while he's on vacation Henry retaliates by firing the remaining staff and hiring a bunch of incompetent misfits in his place who will surely run the cafe into the ground.
Speaking of incongruities: Peter owns a glorious sailboat that's worth seven figures if it's a penny, so the subsequent bellyaching about money being tight doesn't ring true.
The new crew is a classic mix straight out of central casting: Mig (Carlos Carrasco) is the cook, a tough-looking ex-con who wears a bandana, doesn't speak English and only makes Mexican dishes. William (Adwin Brown) is the nerdy young new manager trying to keep it all together. Pepper (Isabella Blake-Thomas) is the goth girl who's always late and treats the customers like an annoyance. Charlie (Blair Williamson) and Gina (Jamie Brewer) are an adorable couple with Down Syndrome who'd rather canoodle than work.
Lastly is Gladys, a wiseacre old lady from the retirement home who answered the ad on a lark and winds up as den mother to the group. She's played feistily by Julia Silverman in a bad grey wig and age makeup.
Peter returns from his vacation to find everything in disarray, and considers shutting the place down. But he finds out Mig's recipes are actually pretty tasty, Gladys is a good motivator and the rest of the team might just be able to do something special as long as he's the one willing to be a little flexible.
Soon enough, they've shared some bonding experiences and are referring to each other as a family. When Fran's lout fiance (Danny Pardo) insults them, it causes a free-for-all with consequences.
There's a lot of likable pieces in the mix here; they just often seem stuck together haphazardly.
For example, three-quarters of the way through the movie we meet Pepper's mom (Elina Madison) in the middle of a health crisis and they immediately launch into an emotional remonstration about her being an adopted child -- something never hinted at before in the movie, or alluded to again after.
Other likable pieces occupy the background, like a trio of Gladys' spinster friends coming in every day to grouse and nosh. They are played by Beverly Todd, Ellen Gerstein and a woman I kept thinking "That can't be Donna Mills," and it's Donna Mills -- nearly 80 and still a stunner.
Gerstein's character, a shy type named Cherub, takes a shine to Mig but then the movie misplaces the romance until the end. Director Linda Palmer, who co-wrote the script with Laree' D. Griffith, seems more interested in continually spinning off new story threads than weaving together the ones she already has.
I'm not even sure a two-hour feature film is the proper format for "Turnover." It has the feel of something more like Netflix's "After Life," with eight or 10 short episodes.
The end result is a dish that feels like something that was whipped together hurriedly based on the ingredients at hand, rather than with the end in mind.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg9XPy80ark[/embed]