No Reservations

While no match in the kitchen for Disney/Pixar's superchef rodent in Ratatouille, this summer's lineup of inoffensive family comedies has cooked up a passable time-waster here. This was achieved largely because of the clear-screen chemistry between Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart (Thank You for Smoking) as rival food geniuses at a trendy New York restaurant. Jones plays a career-driven perfectionists who is supremely talented when it comes to her job as a top local chef, but is so busy putting various ingredients into her gourmet creations she has no time for spice in her personal life. When her sister suddenly dies in an accident, she gets charge of her precocious niece (Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin), who becomes a huge challenge for this workaholic. When she's forced to take time off, new quirky chef Eckhart grabs the opportunity to transform the kitchen, which sets up inevitable friction between the two when the no-nonsense Jones returns. Of course, if you don't know where all of this is heading you never enrolled in Romantic Comedy 101. All in all, this Americanized version of the well-regarded 2001 German film Mostly Martha has kept the general recipe, but lost much of the flavor that made that film such an art house success. Reservations aside, Zeta-Jones and Eckhart still manage to turn No Reservations into an okay chick flick that's probably best left for the chicks.