Simply Irresistible Genre: Comedy and Romance
Duration: 1 hr. 40 min.
Starring: Amanda Peet, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sean Patrick Flanery, Patricia Clarkson, Dylan Baker,
Director: Mark Tarlov
Producer: Joe Caracciolo, John Fiedler, Jon Amiel
Distributor: 20th Century Fox Film Corporation
Release Date: February 5, 1999
Writer: Elizabeth Robinson, Judith Roberts
Synopsis A struggling chef (Gellar) comes across a magic crab and suddenly is able to cook culinary masterpieces. Soon she's falling in love with the high-powered executive (Flanery) opening a nearby high-class restaurant of his own. A bubbly romance along the lines of LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE.Movie Reviews:
Talk about misleading advertising! This clumsy comedy fails on almost all
fronts, and here's why.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, who plays TV's "Buffy the Vampire
Killer," and Sean Patrick Flannery, who plays TV's "Young Indiana
Jones," both
need a truly stellar vehicle to make the crossover from the small screen to
movies - and this isn't it. She plays an inexperienced chef and restaurant owner
who, magically, is able to cook her sensuous passion into glorious cuisine after
she meets this man of her dreams. This idea worked for Mexico's erotic,
enchanting "Like Water for Chocolate," but it falls like a soggy souffle here.
According to the contrived script by Judith Roberts, briskly but routinely
directed by Mark Tarlov, Gellar inherits a failing 70 year-old TriBeCa
restaurant, the Southern Cross, from her mother. Playwright Christopher Durang
plays a cab driver Cupid as he, magically, utilizes an elusive crab to engineer
a "cute" meeting between Gellar and Flannery in a Manha! ttan Farmer's Market.
Flannery's a self-absorbed retail executive in charge of opening a trendy new
restaurant called Jonathan's in Fifth Avenue's tony Henri Bendel, and his
temperamental French chef is giving him grief. Can you guess what happens?
Gellar's Crab Napoleon enchants him, but the standard ingredients are all
measured out: no surprises, no spice, no zest, no originality. Only some
stalwart supporting actors - Betty Buckley, Dylan Baker, Larry Gilliard Jr.,
Patricia Clarkson - are trying the best they can. And, if you've seen "You've
Got Mail," you'll find the plot similarities striking. Not that it's not
pleasant. It is - but so bland that, if you go, you'll soon crave something
else. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Simply Irresistible" is a quite
resistible 3. Back to the kitchen for something with more gusto.