No Reservations
Studio: Warner Bros.
Rated: PG
Cast: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart
Director: Scott Hicks
WorkNameSort: No Reservations
Our Rating: 3.50
A charming cast and an elegantly restrained Philip Glass score elevate the middling to the fairly sublime in this remake of the successful German film Mostly Martha. In fact, the tried-and-true formula of No Reservations actually trumps the independent quirk of Waitress. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays a familiar rom-com archetype, the control-freak perfectionist who’s an expert at her craft (executive chef at a swank Bleecker Street restaurant) but inept at love, and Aaron Eckhart is the eccentric, opera- loving, gloriously available rival-cum-love interest that brings out the real her. Complicating matters more is her niece (Abigail Breslin), who’s foisted upon Jones after her mother dies in a car accident. The clichés here are too many to name, not least of which is the presence of Bob Balaban as a therapist, providing a lazy screenwriting device for Jones’ character to vent her thoughts. And yes, it feels like the movie has a few too many happy montages set to overused public-domain opera numbers, but the emotions are heartfelt, the dangers palpable and the romance organic, making this a clear-cut paradigm done well.
This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2007.