The problem with this romantic comedy is that it just isn't funny.
Catherine Zeta-Jones makes her return to the screen in her first role since... well, who can remember anything she did since "Entrapment," anyway?
She is pitted against Aaron Eckhart, who was last trying to convince us all to take up cigarettes in the clever-but-weak comedy "Thank You For Smoking." The horse-faced Eckhart is a unusual choice for the lead in a romance, given that he has to be one of the ugliest men on screen.
Zeta-Jones is Kate, a steely chef whose life is her kitchen. She works for a trendy restaurant in New York (is there any other city in America?), which is packed out nightly because of her tremendous cuisine.
Kate isolates herself in her world of food, but her organized life is shattered by the death of her sister. Kate is forced to adopt her niece Zoe and attempt to be both mother and head chef.
Her composure crumbles further upon the arrival of a new sous chef in her kitchen, the opera-singing Nick (Eckhart). Kate is repulsed by Nick's playful attitude in the kitchen and his background in Italian restaurants, which clashes with her own classical style.
The inevitable happens when Zoe (the young Abigail Breslin, doing a better job than most child actors) plays matchmaker between her insular aunt and the colorful sous chef.
The problem is that Zeta-Jones doesn't play her character to script. We're supposed to believe she is a firey kitchen master, in the mold of Gordon Ramsay, who snaps at her staff, yells at her customers, and is sent off to therapy to cope with her anger problems. Yet Zeta-Jones barely raises her voice throughout the film, and it's hard to understand the motivation of the characters around her, who all act as if she is some kind of hurricane. Perhaps it's poor acting, but more likely poor directing.
It's terrible to see a director of Scott Hicks' caliber sink to this low. He blew the world away with his tremendous 1996 film "Shine," a moving bio-pic about the troubled Australian pianist David Helfgott. Sadly, Hicks dragged another talented artist down with him on this stinker of a project 's the composer Phillip Glass.
"No Reservations" is another attempt by Hollywood to emulate European cinema. It's a poor re-make of the 2001 German film "Bella Martha," which has a nearly identical storyline. Except in the German version, the cultural tensions between the chef and her unwanted new assistant are far more fitting because he is an Italian 's rather than just having worked in an Italian restaurant. American cinema always seems to miss the nuances and artistry that make European films so much more enjoyable.
Now showing in Estonia and Lithuania. Opens in Latvia Sept. 21.
