No Reservations

New review from The Movie Snob

No Reservations (B). Okay, so this remake was not as good as the German original, which was entitled Mostly Martha in its stateside release a few years ago. Still, it's not a bad little melodrama if you overlook the formulaic aspects and focus on how great the star looks. Catherine Zeta-Jones (Traffic), or "Catherine the Great" as I like to call her, plays a tightly wound chef in a snooty New York restaurant. She has no life and new friends because she is so obsessed with cooking. But very early in the movie her life gets turns upside down when her sister is killed in a car crash and she finds herself the sole guardian of her little niece (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine). And things get even worse when her boss hires an assistant chef, who happens to be a happy, life-affirming (and single) guy (Aaron Eckhart, Thank You For Smoking). I'll let you imagine how things play out.