THE AISLE SEAT - "SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE"
by Mike McGranaghan
The wonder of a romance is the way it sneaks up on you. You might not be looking for that special person, but one day you look up and - there he or she is. There is a feeling of newness, of discovering a treasure. You find something wonderful that you didn't know existed. The charming new romantic comedy Simply Irresistible deals with exactly this kind of thing.
The early scenes don't inspire much confidence. Sarah Michelle Gellar ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") plays Amanda, the chef at a floundering little Manhattan restaurant called The Southern Cross. At the outdoor market one day, she meets a strange man who wants to sell her a basket of crabs. He claims to know her late mother, who once held the same position at the same restaurant her daughter now holds. Amanda purchases the crabs. One of them crawls out of the basket and up the pant leg of Tom (Sean Patrick Flannery from Powder). Tom is in charge of opening a swank new multimillion dollar restaurant in the middle of an upscale department store. He and Amanda have an instant attraction. It's your classic movie "meet cute."
All this happens in the first four minutes of the movie. Then the story settles in to become a delightful little love story that really works. Tom winds up at The Southern Cross with his vapid girlfriend. Amanda agrees to cook for him. Although never the chef her mother once was, she stuns herself by conjuring up a delicious meal (that magical crab helps her out). The catch is that Amanda's emotions are somehow cooked right into the food. Tom takes a bite and becomes rapturous with joy, while his girlfriend becomes aware of her own shallowness.
Their paths cross again, once at the store where Tom works, and again at the Southern Cross, which is now booming with business. They seem unable to really connect unless food is present, mostly because he is gunshy about relationships. Once food is ingested, Tom finds himself unable to resist Amanda's charm. Like most romantic comedies, things conspire to tear them apart, then bring them back together again. But this time it's all centered around food, and the way Amanda's emotions come out through her creations, affecting those who eat them.
The link between food and passion is not a new one. The great 1993 Mexican film Like Water For Chocolate used food as a metaphor for a sexual passion. Simply Irresistible, meanwhile, equates it with romance. Just as Tom surrenders to the taste of Amanda's caramel eclairs, so does he surrender to the chef herself. There's a wonderful scene in which she combines vanilla and flowers; the mixture creates a fog that literally elevates the two when they kiss. And the grand finale, in which Amanda cooks for the opening to Tom's restaurant, is terrific. The diners go through a whole series of emotions over the course of one meal.
Romantic comedies either work masterfully or they don't. The good ones tap into real feelings of love and attraction. Simply Irresistible is one of the good ones. The plot is often bound by the conventions of the genre, but the spaces in-between are filled with romantic notions. Gellar and Flannery make a surprisingly good couple. When their characters gaze into each other's eyes, you believe the attraction. I also like the suggestion that just as people need food to fulfill their appetite, so do they need love to fulfill their hearts.
Although slight, Simply Irresistible is a sweet, effective movie. It's directed with a light touch by Mark Tarlov, and acted with conviction by its two stars. I felt good as I left the theater. And kind of hungry, too.
(
out of four)
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