No Reservations

No Reservations (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin, Patricia Clarkson, Bob Balaban) – It’s predictable, it’s schmaltzy, it’s been done before.  In short, it’s exactly what you go to movies like this for.  Boy meets girl; girl meets boy; girl loses boy; girl and boy get together.  Add to that the fact that the girl (Zeta-Jones as a workaholic master chef at a chic restaurant) suddenly gets thrust into the role of mother (of Little Miss Sunshine’s ultra-cute Abigail Breslin) when her sister dies in a car accident.  In need of a sous chef, the restaurant owner (Patricia Clarkson of The Station Agent and Miracle, among many others), hires a funny, brash, opera-loving, kid-adoring, handsome guy played by Aaron Eckhart (Erin Brockovich, Thank You for Smoking, etc.).  Guess what?  Kate (Zeta-Jones’ character) doesn’t like him; she feels threatened.  Guess what? Little girl loves him (so do all the big girls in the restaurant, too, and even the guys). After all, he makes her spaghetti while aunt makes her gourmet adult food.  Guess what? They all romp, get happy, fall in love.  Whoops! It’s too early in the movie to just end it happily ever after so we need TENSION!  Some is then created so we think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that this couple won’t get together.  We know it’ll all come together and then, voila, it does.  It even has a totally meaningless part for Kate’s “shrink,” played well by veteran Bob Balaban, whose sole reason for being in the film is to deliver the line “You know that the best dishes are those you invent yourself.”  Whoa! Sounds like a formula film, doesn’t it?  It is that.  But it also has actors you like playing it like you want them to.  And for a matinee’s price or a rental, it’s worth the mindless 105 minutes of seeing it all unfold before your eyes.