As Kate Armstrong, a no-nonsense chef at a chic New York restaurant, Catherine Zeta-Jones crimps her lips and fastidiously straightens her apron, yet the mannerisms come off as yet another contrivance in a picture full of them. Equally annoying is Aaron Eckhart as Kate’s new sous chef. Blaring opera in the kitchen and talking to the fish, he’s the Patch Adams of the culinary world. No Reservations is generically engineered to bring these two together, but the journey is a painful, cliched one. This remake of the much better 2001 German film Mostly Martha is a product straight from a Hollywood test kitchen.
