Making food has always been central to the immigrant experience, a piece of our cultural origins passed down l’dor v’dor. In Abe, Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Grostein Andrade combines this motif with another immigrant theme: finding your identity among conflicting heritages. The result is certainly earnest with its multiethnic themes but perhaps a bit too trope-heavy as a product of YA storytelling.

Twelve-year-old Abe (Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp) is a third-generation American living in Brooklyn, the son of an Israeli-Jewish mom (Dagmara Dominczyk) and a Palestinian-Muslim dad (Arian Moayed). While his parents lean toward the secular side religiously—Abe’s dad is actually an atheist—his grandparents are devoted to their Middle Eastern upbringings, which is already a recipe for political uneasiness, and not just because dinner arguments always turn into a rawer version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both sides of the family see a religious future for their grandson, but one that’s not inclusive.

Should Abe pick between a future as Avraham preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, or Ibrahim attending Mosque services? He just sees himself as Abe, aspiring chef, yet any choice he makes will leave someone in the family feeling betrayed. So cooking becomes his outlet, a way to explore and tweak culture through cuisine and post the outcomes on his Tumblr page to the delight of many, as well as one obnoxious troll. Most notably, Abe becomes fixated with fusion cuisine, blending flavors that wouldn’t normally work together into something unique. To learn more about this practice, he seeks out Chico (Seu Jorge), a Brazilian street chef who runs a fusion kitchen and occasionally appears at Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg food market.

Rather than attend the grade school-level cooking camp his parents signed him up for (he’s 12, mind you), Abe skips those classes and takes the subway over to Chico’s kitchen to learn some professional tricks. While reluctant at first, Chico eventually takes Abe under his wing, a subplot which goes on to follow your standard mentor/student narrative. And the dynamic between these two is sweet thanks to Schnapp and Jorge’s solid chemistry, though I wish we saw more interactions between Chico and Abe’s family. The latter doesn’t know that Abe’s working with an actual chef.

Unfortunately, this leads into the film’s biggest plot hole. “Liar revealed” stories are annoyingly predictable because, at some point, the main character will be discovered and punished for the deception. Yet several of Abe’s voice-overs imply that he’s posting these interactions on social media. Why play hooky if you’re going to brag about it to your followers, especially with the possibility that your parents could see it?

Despite this issue, I still enjoyed the religious conflict between Abe and his grandparents. You can tell he wants to be part of both their worlds, yet the elders can’t look past their endless cultural grudges to support a grandchild they equally love. Abe’s Jewish grandfather (Breaking Bad’sMark Margolis) emigrated from Israel so his daughter wouldn’t be conscripted into military service like he was during the country’s formative years, not long after the Holocaust. Yet his Muslim grandparents (Tom Mardirosian and Salem Murphy) left Palestine because that same army initiated an occupation of their country, the consequences of which were equally demoralizing. Whose anger is more justified? Like virtually any conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there’s no easy answer, and the script does not pick a side.

This is definitely a watchable movie with good performances, especially during the third-act climactic dinner. Yet the story doesn’t feel as innovative as it wants to be because it’s bound to a formulaic movie structure, despite some thought-provoking conversations. The execution feels too safe because we can almost anticipate the outcome. And with a polarizing family dynamic like this, you’re always expecting Abe to go bolder.

Visually, Andrade captures the wonder of Brooklyn adequately, but there’s no standout camera shots beyond those mixed with flashy hashtags and Tumblr posts. The real sexy camerawork is saved for images of Middle Eastern dishes and Smorgasburg appetizers, which reach Chef­ levels of food porn. In some cases, the imagery feels like a way to pad out Abe’s various monologue segments. But thematically they mirror his central goal: If he can incorporate both sides of his family’s culture into food, a path to healing their divisions is possible.

And that’s the emotional hook for Abe’s story, despite its predictability. Even if you can’t magically solve 80 years of geopolitical scars with a dinner meal, the fact that Abe is willing to try tells you his heart is in the right place. That’s a mitzvot worth respecting.