No Reservations

Review by Clint Morris

You know how sometimes when you’re cooking soup you leave it to simmer so long that it not only ends up boiling over the top but you expunge all the flavour from it?

Scott ‘Shine’ Hicks’ latest film (a drama being incorrectly marketed as a romantic comedy) is a little like that. It simmers away quite nicely, until the third act when he lets it go over-the-top and in turn dries up most of the good stuff he was working towards.

Not to say the new food-centric flick is inconsumable, it most definitely isn’t, it just needed to be stirred occasionally…. Rather than simply letting it bubble away to be what it’s gotta be.

Though advertised as a two-hander starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart, the pic’s actually a three hander – with Little Miss Sunshine scene-stealer Abigail Breslin not only given just as big a piece of the pie, but outshining her much more established co-stars at every turn.

As she was in the acclaimed indy hit of 2006, Breslin is cute, adorable, credible and very easy to watch. She lights up a screen, the way a light bulb lights up a room. In many ways, she makes the movie.

She plays the orphaned child of a woman whose sister, a haughty cook played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, has been left to fend for. Both - as is usually the case in these types of movies – aren’t exactly happy with the situation, but the more they get to know each other (and Aaron Eckhart’s likeable kitchen chef character), the better the new unit becomes.

A remake (isn’t everything?) of the 2001 dramedy Bella Martha, starring Martina Gedek and Maxime Foerste, Reservations isn’t quite the film its predecessor was. Zeta Jones’s performance is probably the weakest element of the film – there doesn’t seem to be enough layers to her character or her performance just isn’t credible enough, because she’s a hard character to root for.

The screenplay is also a little all over the place. It starts off reasonably well, but by the time it gets to the third act it races for the finish line with the slightest disregard for a satisfactory ending. The conclusion is very flat. Very dull.

At the same time, this is still a very sweet movie – as sweet as a crème caramel, in fact - and will probably make for a good date movie. Breslin is the main reason to watch though – she’s the glue holding it all together.

3 out of 5

No Reservations
Australian release: 23rd August, 2007
Cast: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin, Patricia Clarkson, Jennifer Wade
Director: Scott Hicks
Website: Click here.