Film

The romcom formula gets a weirdly subdued treatment from Hicks (the good Shine, the bad Snow Falling on Cedars). Zeta-Jones plays Kate Armstrong, a successful but overly work-oriented chef in a New York bistro. She’s so driven that her boss (Clarkson) insists that she see a shrink (Balaban). Kate is that old cliché: the professional woman who needs to be loosened up by the love of a man with an overabundance of joie de vivre. Sure enough, into her life walks Nick (Eckhart), a chef who she thinks is trying to take her job. He leads the kitchen staff in sing-alongs, tells funny stories and generally makes her seem like an uptight bitch.

What throws this script off the usual romcom path is the presence of Kate’s niece Zoe (Breslin), whom Kate must take care of after a car accident kills Zoe’s mom. Kate has to learn how to adjust her life to include a grieving little girl while also juggling a kitchen rivalry–turned–romance. Both relationships are meant to teach Kate to lighten up and take life as it comes. (Why must Hollywood continue to punish professional women for being successful?)

It’s perfectly harmless and intermittently moving, but the leads are both oddly miscast. Zeta-Jones delivers a monologue about the proper preparation of quail with the seductive but neutral clarity of an advertising spokeswoman, but we never fully buy her passion for food. And Eckhart telegraphs Nick’s “quirky charm,” but gives the distinct feeling that he was thrown into a role written for someone else. Things work themselves out, tears and laughs are called forth at appropriate intervals, and all you’re likely to muster when the credits roll is a shrug.