Someone recommended this movie to me, since I love to cook and enjoy all things about the act of cooking up wonderful things. It came up amidst a discussion of great foodie movies, and I thought I ought to watch this one, in my eternal search to find something to top the perfection that was Eat Drink Man Woman (1994).
This movie fell short on multiple aspects.
As a general narrative, one of the things every good story tries to do is build a sense of empathy around the protagonist. In this case he seems like a whiny, arrogant, spoilt brat and there's very little in his struggle that anyone might identify or empathise with. His relationship with his father is strained, but both his father and biological mother are portrayed as such cardboard cutout characters that they don't seem convincing at all. The mother is shown to be a lousy cook, and even the representation of this inability seems to have been overacted and exaggerated in an utterly unconvincing way. Nothing the protagonist does even paints himself in any positive light. His struggle doesn't seem greater than any that anyone watching the movie might have had to endure.
The movie could have easily redeemed itself in its portrayal of food, but they only appear as cursory flashes as Helena Bonham Carter's character cook up one storm after another, with the camera barely pausing on a single dish for more than half a second. I understand this is a TV movie, but there's a clear lack of skill in the direction and writing of this movie. I think the actors did the best they could have with what they were given to work with, but the movie does really drag for the first 40 minutes or so, before Helena Bonham Carter's character shows up and actually starts to make the movie watchable. To be clear, the movie doesn't drag because it's boring, but because it's mostly spent with this annoying child who whines and throws tantrums, and his parents have no depth beyond his father hating him (unreasonably, without even trying to understand why) and mother being a good for nothing sick person.
Some scenes even seem quite hard to believe, like one where the boy brings home some spaghetti to cook, and the father breaks a piece of raw spaghetti and goes 'what is this, it's so hard!' I find it extremely hard to believe that people in the UK wouldn't know how spaghetti works in the 70s.
This movie began to annoy me within the first five minutes of watching it, and did nothing to relieve this, only going from bad to worse.
I only chose to write this review in case another fellow culinary enthusiast decided to watch this film hoping for a great food-related movie. Don't, you will be sorely disappointed.
This movie fell short on multiple aspects.
As a general narrative, one of the things every good story tries to do is build a sense of empathy around the protagonist. In this case he seems like a whiny, arrogant, spoilt brat and there's very little in his struggle that anyone might identify or empathise with. His relationship with his father is strained, but both his father and biological mother are portrayed as such cardboard cutout characters that they don't seem convincing at all. The mother is shown to be a lousy cook, and even the representation of this inability seems to have been overacted and exaggerated in an utterly unconvincing way. Nothing the protagonist does even paints himself in any positive light. His struggle doesn't seem greater than any that anyone watching the movie might have had to endure.
The movie could have easily redeemed itself in its portrayal of food, but they only appear as cursory flashes as Helena Bonham Carter's character cook up one storm after another, with the camera barely pausing on a single dish for more than half a second. I understand this is a TV movie, but there's a clear lack of skill in the direction and writing of this movie. I think the actors did the best they could have with what they were given to work with, but the movie does really drag for the first 40 minutes or so, before Helena Bonham Carter's character shows up and actually starts to make the movie watchable. To be clear, the movie doesn't drag because it's boring, but because it's mostly spent with this annoying child who whines and throws tantrums, and his parents have no depth beyond his father hating him (unreasonably, without even trying to understand why) and mother being a good for nothing sick person.
Some scenes even seem quite hard to believe, like one where the boy brings home some spaghetti to cook, and the father breaks a piece of raw spaghetti and goes 'what is this, it's so hard!' I find it extremely hard to believe that people in the UK wouldn't know how spaghetti works in the 70s.
This movie began to annoy me within the first five minutes of watching it, and did nothing to relieve this, only going from bad to worse.
I only chose to write this review in case another fellow culinary enthusiast decided to watch this film hoping for a great food-related movie. Don't, you will be sorely disappointed.
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