No Reservations

Recommendation

The story sets up a female chef in the city who’s work has become her obsession, but her lifestyle is radically changed by a family tragedy. Via this tragedy the film sets itself up with some ambitious topics to tackle, however, unfortunately for the most part it doesn’t address these themes. The movie is trying to be a full drama and a full romance and it just doesn’t fully work.

I don’t want to be unfair to the film, because it wasn’t bad. I would even recommend it if you’re looking for a romance because I think at the end of the day the romance aspect wins out. If you go in expecting a payoff for the tragic parts of the story you’ll be disappointed. If you are on the fence about it because you expect the themes are going to be a bit heavy, don’t hesitate because they play it down for the most part and never fixate on any of the serious story beats.

Thoughts

The following are some unorganized thoughts on the film. This section is spoiler heavy.

Nick’s Introduction is Awkward

The love story is the centerpiece of the film, but it starts out a little awkward with how Nick (the male lead) is introduced. He’s made out to be unlikeable up until the point when the story needs him to be the love interest and his personality changes. He is framed as a rival chef to inject some drama into the plot.

In order to make us sympathize with Kate’s point of view, Nick does some weird things early on like lying about his grandmother dying just to get Kate to try his pasta. His character is overbearing and obnoxious. As an audience we get the feeling he’s a threat to Kate’s job.

Later when it shifts into romance mode, neither character really grows to account for the negative character traits from the beginning, instead they just magically vanish. Ultimately this is a minor nitpick, and the other things Nick does to help Kate offset his initial weird behavior, but because those things that are presented as negative and aren’t addressed, it leaves a small feeling that a payoff is missing somewhere.

Lack of Resolutions

The feeling that something hasn’t been addressed is the vague impression that I got throughout the film. It’s not simply that Nick’s character changes without explanation. There are several more explicit scenes that are left hanging or with very unsatisfactory conclusions.

At several points in the film, Zoe does things that should elicit more of a response from Kate. Zoe runs into a busy street in one scene, but Kate lets her go without another word after she says she wants her mother. Zoe’s behavior throughout the scene is very believable for a child in her situation, but the script doesn’t seem to know how an adult should react to the difficult things she’s saying so instead it just drops them.

The main piece of falling drama in the film happens when Zoe runs away. It brings Nick and Kate back together and we see the extent that Kate cares for Zoe. It also builds to a pretty sad scene where they find Zoe by her mother’s grave and she explains that she is worried she’ll forget her mother. Kate has some throwaway line that they won’t and then there are no other repercussions for Zoe running away.

The most glaring example of something be brought up and completely left unresolved is the scene when Kate is talking to the therapist about her family. He asks about what happened once their mother died and she says she doesn’t want to get into it, but implies a lot of backstory with her family life. From that point on, we don’t learn anything more and that information is never used for an emotional payoff. Any one of the difficult situations that Kate finds herself in with Zoe could’ve drawn on that setup, but it’s never used.

The reason this bothers me so much is because I think there’s a genuinely great movie trying to break out, but it just misses the mark in some places. There is a lot of potential for an emotional payoff, but one never materializes.

Bonding Over the Loss

I think the pieces of the movie that worked the best are the parts where they lean into Zoe coming to live with Kate. The decision to have the mother character die sets up so much potential to explore the complex relationship that results from that.

I also want to point out that I think Zoe’s character is really well acted. Relying heavily on a child actor to hold up the emotional core of a movie seems risky, but in this case she’s the only actor that gives an emotionally real performance. I looked this up, but at the point when this movie was made, the actress (Abigail Breslin) was already known. She had already acted in Signs and Little Miss Sunshine. Watching the movie I was wondering if maybe they were the ones who discovered her. Regardless, her performance makes the story feel real on a level that the other actors don’t bring with them.

The Restaurant Owner

If the movie has an antagonist, it’s the owner of the restaurant, but she’s primarily trying to make her restaurant better. She has personality issues with the main character, which we know from the beginning since she’s making Kate go to therapy. It’s not surprising when she tries to hire a more friendly face for head chef in light of that. She’s also much more concerned with customer happiness than her own employees’ which is frustrating, but not unrealistic.

Her character is a strong fixed point in Kate’s character arc. Kate realizes that she doesn’t need to be held captive by a job where her boss will completely sell her out to the customers’ insane opinions and also go behind her back to offer her job to another chef. The boss character is just nice enough that a viewer can understand why Kate would cling to the job even though it’s not ideal. At the same time when she makes her decision to quit, it’s also understandable.

The Therapist

I noticed when I was looking things up about this film that it’s actually labeled as a comedy (at least on IMDb) which I disagree with. I did not include comedy in my categorization because I honestly don’t think there’s a single funny scene in the movie, but I wonder if the therapist scenes were meant to be funny.

The setting and his character’s personality are so tonally different from the rest of the film that it feels like the stage is set for humor, but none comes. I’m not saying this because I think the jokes are unfunny; there are no jokes as far as I can tell.

If the scenes aren’t meant to be funny then they are just there to act as spoken exposition dumps. Kate’s character explains her emotions to the therapist which is easier for the writer. Rather than having to come up with a way to show her emotions through interactions with Zoe or Nick, just insert a scene with the therapist where she states exactly what she’s feeling and thinking about.

The Downstairs Neighbor

The downstairs neighbor character’s role in the film is hard to categorize. I’m not entirely sure why he’s in the movie in the first place. At one point he is watching the niece when Kate gets back from a date which is played for a laugh (although again it wasn’t really funny so much as it was awkward because she’s trying to explain away why he’s there as if Nick would be surprised that someone was at home watching the 8 year old).

The only definite thing his character does for the plot is lightly set Kate up as someone not looking for love at the beginning of the movie, but if you cut all of his other scenes I think you’d end up with basically the same film. Anytime there’s a character like that I find myself wondering if they should’ve been included at all.