Hungry for more

Feast of Love is less a large, satisfying meal and more a slightly undercooked appetizer platter. It’s got bits and pieces that are tasty, but no main course to frame a meal around and fill you up.

The film opens with Morgan Freeman’s character, Harry, who, unable to sleep, wanders Portland to ponder the past 18 months of loves found and lost. These loves are not his own, though he does have a hand in them.

Harry frequents Jitters, a little coffee house owned by Bradley (Greg Kinnear) and manned by Oscar (Toby Hemingway). He frequents it so much, in fact, that he becomes chums with Bradley and a sort-of father figure to Oscar and his new girlfriend, Chloe (Alexa Davalos).

Predictably, Harry, a professor on leave, is the giver of advice, especially the relationship kind. Unfortunately that advice doesn’t have much depth to it (though it seems to work anyway). “See that pretty lady who just walked into your empty coffee shop? Go talk to her.” And kazaam—Bradley has a new girlfriend.

In fact, Bradley jumps from relationship to relationship so easily it seems the message here is that love is fickle. Except then Chloe, upon visiting a fortune teller, is told that love can be enough to keep people alive, suggesting that it is much, much more than a passing feeling.

Feast of Love perhaps tries to cram too much of author Charles Baxter’s book into two hours, because the only relationship that seems fully formed is that between the young Oscar and Chloe.

The rest is left undeveloped. Undercooked, if you will.