A great film critique, because it works so very well on so many different levels--especially the opening paragraphs:
To see "No Reservations"
is to see what's wrong with a lot of American movies. A remake of the German
film, "Mostly Martha," it takes a winning recipe and adds some distinctly
Hollywood flavors: It takes adult characters and has them behave like children.
It takes serious moments and turns them cute. And it takes the character of a
troubled child and turns her into an intolerable brat that the audience is
somehow supposed to find sympathetic.
The result is a botched job that can make you wonder about the director,
Scott Hicks, and about the screenwriter, Carol Fuchs, but also about us. If
this is what passes for recognizable human behavior in an American film, some
of us are seeing reality through a very bizarre filter. At the very least, if
these conventions soothe us - adults who act like immature narcissists and
children who act like monsters - we might ask ourselves why.
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