No Reservations? Not Quite
Written: Jul 21 '07
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: restaurant setting, some of the supporting characters are wonderful, generally well acted
Cons: no chemistry between Zeta-Jones and Eckhart or Zeta-Jones and Breslin, fairly unoriginal story
The Bottom Line: No Reservations has enough to make it worth seeing if you're in the mood for a slightly serious movie designed to make you think about what's important in life.
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| quasar's Full Review: No Reservations |
No Reservations is not a terribly original movie. The career woman who inherits her dead sister's child or children has been a recurring plot line in many movies for more than 25 years. No Reservations is a perfectly adequate incarnation of this story, but nothing more.
Chef Kate Armstrong's life changes forever when her sister dies in a car crash. Suddenly she's the sole caretaker for her niece Zoe. Fastidious, used to living life to her very exacting standards, and immersed in a career involving working early mornings and late nights, Kate and motherhood, even surrogate motherhood, don't seem to mesh. Things are a bit shaky until Kate starts bringing Zoe to work and Zoe bonds with the new sous chef Nick. Drawn together by Zoe, Kate and free spirit Nick start to bond too, but can they overcome very different outlooks on life and the professional paranoia and pressures of working in the same kitchen? Go see No Reservations to find out.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this movie. The restaurant setting is interesting and adds additional tension to n already tense setup. Kate, Nick, and Zoe are reasonably well fleshed out and well performed by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, and Abigail Breslin respectively. The problem is that the various actors have no chemistry together, or, more specifically, Zeta-Jones has no chemistry with either of her co-stars. Since the movie centers around these relationships, this posed a pretty big problem.
Breslin and Eckhart did have a bit more of a spark and many of the scenes featuring the two together worked well. The movie might have worked a bit better if he'd been the one left to care for an orphaned niece.
Also adding a lot to the movie were Patricia Clarkson as the sometimes understanding and sometimes exasperated restaurant owner and Bob Babalan as Kate's shrink, a man who doesn't know what to do with a client who talks about food and prepares custom dishes for him to try but shies away from personal conversation.
Between these characters and the added wrinkles from the restaurant setting, No Reservations has enough to make it worth seeing if you're in the mood for a slightly serious movie designed to make you think about what's important in life, but it fails as a romance. If you're looking for a romantic comedy, look elsewhere. That said, I doubt anyone would really feel like they wasted two hour if they saw this movie, nor should they feel like they're missing out if they don't.
Recommended:
Yes
Viewing Method: Sneak Preview at My Local Theater
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