No Reservations: Movie Review (2007)

Directed by Scott Hicks, written by Carol Fuchs and Sandra Nettelbeck, 104 minutes, rated PG.

The new Scott Hicks movie, "No Reservations," is a tragedy, a romantic comedy and a drama, with its charismatic cast navigating the manufactured highs and lows with enough skill to deepen what otherwise might have been a movie sorely lacking in depth.

Screenwriters Carol Fuchs and Sandra Nettelbeck based their script on the 2001 German film "Mostly Martha," a good movie that also featured a story driven by its soundtrack and saved by its cast, each of which was better than the material.

In that film, Martina Gedeck was Martha, a Hamburg chef unexpectedly saddled with her niece when Martha’s sister dies in an accident. Sergio Castellitto is her sous-chef Mario, an Italian of such limitless patience, you have to wonder whether his sauce, so to speak, packs any zing. But it does and he gradually wins Martha over, which is no surprise to anyone who sees the film.

In "Reservations," Catherine Zeta-Jones is Kate, a revered gourmet chef at a top New York restaurant which is located in the cleanest slice of Manhattan you've ever seen--its version of Bleecker Street, for instance, is so spit-shined, you could eat off its sewers.

Kate is a woman happily tethered only to the job she loves, so when she loses her sister to an accident and assumes the responsibility of raising her niece, Zoe (Abigail Breslin), the transition proves a bit more difficult than she imagined.

Zoe wants nothing to do with her aunt, whom she barely knows, and Kate, by extension, isn’t sure what to do herself. She seeks help from her psychiatrist (an excellent Bob Balaban), but the situation nevertheless stretches her to her limit, so much so that Kate's boss, Paula (Patricia Clarkson), insists that Kate take time off from work to get her life back in order--and, most importantly, to grieve.

Reluctantly, she does so, unaware that the affable Italian sous-chef Nick (Aaron Eckhart), whose formidable 5 o'clock shadow could scale a fish, is hired to run the kitchen in her absence. When Kate catches wind of that, let’s just say the movie whips its whites into one heady froth.

While there is little logic and no surprises in "No Reservations"--the movie can be a heartbreaker, though one that doesn't leave a dry cliché in the room--films such as this can manage to get by on subtlety, feeling and charm so long as they have the right cast to see them through. "Mostly Martha" had that. This movie does, too.

Zeta-Jones, for instance, is quite different from how we've seen her in previous films. At the start, you don't believe her for a minute--the rat in "Ratatouille" is a more convincing cook--but by the end, she's done enough to win you over, particularly in the few touching scenes she shares with Zoe. As for Eckhart, who is cast as the world's most sensitive, perfect man, he goes to great lengths to appeal to the headstrong Kate by convincing her that he's at once worthy of her and also that he’s not her equal.

At my screening, nobody seemed to mind the latter.

Grade: B-