Love's Kitchen (2011)

I wanted to and expected to enjoy this but its basically Britain's equivalent to a Lifetime movie with an absolutely unimaginative story, flat romance, bland characters and filled with every romantic comedy movie cliché going.I was actually surprised by how, well not bad exactly -because the acting and production is fine but just unoriginal this was. I did enjoy the leads (Dougray Scott & Claire Forlani) but their romance was still pretty uninspiring. Scott plays a successful chef and restaurateur in London who loses his zest for cooking after his wife dies in a car accident. With encouragement from friends (including a cameo from Gordon Ramsey) he buys a country pub and turns it into a gourmet restaurant. Forlani is a food critique and his mousse catches her eye. 6/28/14

It wasn't until I consulted Wikipedia that I found out how much commercial contempt that LOVE'S KITCHEN received from the British public . In the five cinema's it was shown in it made a grand taking of one hundred and twenty one pounds sterling ( £121 ) which means a grand total of seventeen people paid to watch it . Putting it in to perspective about you're twice as likely to know someone who attended the opening than you have of knowing someone who became a lottery millionaire that week One suspects that this exceptional low grossing opening led to a large amount of bandwagonism by the British newspaper critics . They all without exception put the boot in to the film as if their professional careers depended upon slating the film . As someone who has nothing to lose by stating their opinion online I can only state that it's not a good film but is nowhere as bad as made out The problem lies in that it's maybe trying a bit too hard and does become very predictable . The audience are asked to empathise why the trauma of Rob Haley played by Dougray Scott who losing his wife in a car crash has to now bring up his young daughter while trying to expand a business in a small town populated by nearly famous British character actors . In it's efforts to be sweet it ends up being rather sickly and like so many British movies it has a feel and look of something that gets broadcast on Sunday evenings on ITV . As a romantic comedy it's not much better or worse than other British films within the genre and wonders perhaps if its failure is mainly down to the public appetite for this type of British film had like the gangster film been done to death

As I have learnt from the multitude of reality TV cooking shows which make regular appearances in the Malone household, the secret to a good dish is carefully selecting fresh ingredients and balancing the different flavors together in order for them to all work in harmony on the plate. However in Love's Kitchen they do things in a different way. Essentially chucking a bunch of old, out of date and re-heated ideas into the mixing bowl, bunging it in the oven and after 90 mins they have produced an under-cooked, half-baked idea of film, devoid of any real flavour or substance.Love's Kitchen tells the lukewarm tale of successful chef and restaurateur Rob Haley (Dougray Scott) who looses all passion for food after the tragic death of his wife in a car accident. A scathing review of his restaurant leads to a cringe worthy intervention by Gordon Ramsey, before our Rob heads off to the countryside and buys The Boot, an old country pub which his late wife fell in love with before her untimely demise and is now frequented by an American food critic (Claire Forlani). Here Rob proceeds to try and recapture his love for food and turn around both the culinary and fiscal fortunes of The Boot. So it appears as if Love's Kitchen is essentially a 90 minute episode of Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, which just in case you were wondering, that's not a good thing.Most rom-coms are predictable, so much so that you can sketch out the plot within the first 5 mins or so of meeting the characters. Why some work and others don't is how much the audience grows to like and invest in the two leads. I am big rom-com fan and a huge admirer of a happy ending. I don't mind it being telegraphed, but I want to enjoy the journey. I need to want the couple to be together at the end of the film. Within 5 mins of watching Love's Kitchen I wanted to take a spatula and start slapping people around the face.Everything about the film felt forced. It felt as if they had studied what had worked in Four Weddings or Notting Hill and tried to recreate it piece by piece. Bringing together a British chap and an American lass has always worked well in the past, but this time the main leads are simply unconvincing with precious little chemistry together. They didn't seem suited to each other at all, so you just didn't care what happens to them.The supporting cast fared little better and appeared to be the dregs of out of work British soap opera actors. Eastenders was well represented and I almost fell of my chair when Nigel from Brookside turned up. I am sure if I had looked hard enough I probably would have found an extra from Crossroads somewhere in the background. There were moments when I couldn't believe what I was watching and hearing. The script sounded like it had come from a Carry On film and some of the characters felt like a cross between caricatures of English country folk and characters from Viz (get ooorffff my land!!) . At times I felt embarrassed for the cast, but mostly I just wanted it to stop.First time writer/director James Hacking did learn one good thing from Four Weddings though and that was Simon Callow. He is star of this film and simply delightful as a boozed up food critic, quite reminiscent of Keith Floyd. I could have happily have watched a film just about him.Apparently when then film opened to a small select 5 screens, it only took 121 GBP in its opening weekend, making it one of the lowest UK openings of all time. You can see why.

When I first saw this film I was decidedly unimpressed but when I had seen it 4 times I realised what a charming gem of a film it is though rather amateurish Story is a failed chef (Scott) buys an old English pub that looks out on a village green complete with pond and ducks and falls in love with a food critic Forlani. The chemistry between Forlani and Scott is really good seeing as how in real life the two just got married Sometimes I thought Forlani was going to eat Scott rather than the lovely trifle. This film could never be a financial success because no blood everywhere or dead or nude bodies. It should be watched in the atmosphere of the home not the cinema and was well worth making.