A Dish of Tasty Leftovers

Scott Hicks, the director of “No Reservations,” deserves hearty congratulations for coming as close as anyone can to defying the first rule of remakes — which is that remakes are always worse, and usually much worse than the originals on which they’re based.Well, you can see why. Not only can Hollywood not help Hollywoodizing everything it touches, but remakes start out well behind in the race because, by definition, they haven’t got what made the movies they copy worth copying to start with — that is, a compelling individual vision.In this case, that vision belonged to the German director Sandra Nettelbeck, whose “Bella Martha,” was released in America as “Mostly Martha” in 2002. It starred the only averagely beautiful Martina Gedeck as Martha, a workaholic chef at an upscale Hamburg restaurant; the only averagely cute Maxime Foerste as the orphaned niece who comes to live with her, and the genuine Italian Sergio Castellitto as the sous-chef who brings the sunshine into their lives.In their places, the remake boasts the movie-star beautiful Catherine Zeta-Jones, the movie-star cute Abigail Breslin from “Little Miss Sunshine,” and the imitation Italian but movie-star handsome Aaron Eckhart. The result is a high Hollywood gloss on the finished product that makes it seem, at least for those who have seen the original, somewhat detached from reality.Both movies are mainly concerned with probing the psyche of the central character, whose name is changed from Martha to Kate for the version released to theaters today. Like Martha, Kate is supposedly lonely and emotionally bottled-up, but it was a lot easier to believe that about Ms. Gedeck’s character than it is of Ms. Zeta-Jones’s.“Mostly Martha” was a touching and bittersweet variation on the venerable European myth of the warm-blooded Southerner who comes to town to thaw out the Teutonic ice maiden. “No Reservations” is more of a rollicking comedy based on the American myth of the free-spirited wanderer (Mr. Eckhart) who loosens up the uptight career girl (Ms. Zeta-Jones) and, inevitably, teaches her how to love.Though for the most part it sticks closely to the original, “No Reservations” does make some subtle changes. Ms. Nettelbeck’s movie emphasized the relationship between Martha and her niece and made the food more or less incidental. Mr. Hicks reverses these emphases.Movies about food and wine — such as “Big Night,” “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman,” “Sideways,” “A Good Year,” or even “Waitress” — are getting to be for us what movies about artists and musicians were for our parents, and movies about aristocrats and the idle rich were for our grandparents — that is, an easy way to class up a picture. Now even cartoon rats are classy if, as in “Ratatouille,” they aspire to be chefs. Did I say rats? Heck, even Adam Sandler re-imagined his usual overgrown adolescent as a chef in “Spanglish.”Similarly, Mr. Eckhart’s Nick tastefully conveys his passionate nature with the help of the boom box on which he plays snatches of Italian opera in Kate’s kitchen. Interestingly, his prototype in “Mostly Martha” was into Dean Martin instead.The touch of class is a way of conferring a kind of low-level celebrity status on the characters that makes them a better match for their movie-star looks, but it also takes away some of the coherence of the characters and their relationships.In “Mostly Martha,” for instance, Martha’s visits to a therapist on the instructions of her boss, the restaurant’s owner, are meant to be an important clue to her character. “Why do you think your boss thinks you need therapy?” the shrink asks her.“I have no idea,” she replies.The same lines are repeated in “No Reservations,” but instead of seeming like a telling detail about the main character — part of her determined refusal to part with a single scrap of her independence — they seem like a joke. Kate is so dazzlingly beautiful and charming — in short, and in spite of her imperiousness in the kitchen, so perfect as she is — that we have no idea, either.“No Reservations” also makes much more of Kate’s hostility to Nick, whom she professes to believe has been hired to take over her job. But this is just a way for them to “meet cute,” not a real or believable anxiety for us.In short, Mr. Hicks has stripped most of the look of real-life from “Mostly Martha.” What’s left, however, is perhaps the best a remake director can hope for, which is a picture that makes those who haven’t seen the original go away thinking they’ve seen a pretty good movie.jbowman@nysun.com

A Dish of Tasty Leftovers

A Dish of Tasty Leftovers

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