No Reservations

Yet another example of Hollywood rehashing a movie from another language and blanching everything that was compelling and tasty about it, serving up the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. This time around the translation is from the German epicurean cult film Mostly Martha, although what ends up regurgitated to speak English is mostly piffle. Here we have Catherine Zeta-Jones as an uptight, neurotic chef at a high-end Manhattan restaurant who ends up in custody of her sister’s daughter (that annoying kid from Little Miss Sunshine). After spending a prerequisite reel of film mourning the sister, Zeta-Jones is suddenly confronted with an irksome foil, a spontaneous sous chef (Aaron Eckhart) who is thrown into the mix to deliver with the romantic mechanizations. Of course, all the trappings, clichés and tropes are trotted out to avoid confusing the target demographic, leaving pretty much mashed potatoes, albeit sans even gravy.