No Reservations

Ever since marrying classic codger Michael Doulas, Catherine Zeta-Jones' acting career has been somewhat forgotten in a sea of tabloid and magazine gossip. No Resevations is perhaps the perfect vehicle to bring her thespian talents back into the fore. After all, what gives better focus to a leading actor than a mainstream rom-com?

No Reservations tells the tale of Kate, the hard-working and successful chef who finds herself unwittingly in charge of a youngster who has just lost her mother. It won't ruin the film too much to say that things proceed as expected. A man turns up, and by the end Kate has the trademark stick removed from her posterior. There are several serious problems with this film. The first is that while Zeta-Jones can do frosty, where the film demands some warmth in its second half, she simply can't deliver.

As the mother-less youngster, the talented Abigail Breslin manages to fill this void to some extent, but the romantic moments still remain chilly around the edges. The second main problem is that for a stock romantic comedy, the first third of the film is very downbeat, being largely concerned with loss of the child's (Breslin) mother. Reservations? Yes, we do have some, but the film does at least manage to avoid the troughs of irritation that plague the genre's lesser examples.

Released 31st August 2007 by Warner Bros.

Written by Andrew Williams.