No Reservations

A control-freak chef is forced to embrace chaos in this romantic comedy-drama based on the German hit ‘Mostly Martha’. Catherine Zeta-Jones is Kate, head chef at a glamorous restaurant in New York. With a routine of work, therapy and more work, she thinks her life is sorted. Enter Zoe (Abigail Breslin), Kate’s newly bereaved niece, closely followed by Nick (Aaron Eckhart), a free-wheeling Italian sous-chef who likes to sing opera and spill pasta. Kate’s struggles with Zoe – to her something of an alien invasion – invite some involving dramatic moments and some comedy. But Eckhart is the wrong choice for a romantic lead – there’s still a touch of the superciliousness that makes him such a great anti-hero – and the film goes for long stretches without either laughs or pathos. With its textbook sentiment and miscast adult leads, this suffers in comparison to the German original, which was genuinely – not Hollywood – quirky. Die-hard romantics may forgive it plenty; others may prefer to check out the original.