Simply Irresistible

USA/Germany 1999

Reviewed by Kevin Maher

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

At a Manhattan market Amanda Shelton is given a free basket of crabs. Afterwards she meets businessman Tom Bartlett who is presently overseeing the opening of a new restaurant at Bendel's department store. Amanda goes back to the ailing Southern Cross restaurant in SoHo where she works as a chef. Tom and his girlfriend arrive there later for a meal. One of Amanda's crabs has supernatural powers and confers magical cooking skills upon her. Deeply affected by the meal, Tom's girlfriend breaks several plates and storms out. Impressed with the food, Tom offers to buy Amanda some new plates.

News of Amanda's cooking spreads, and business booms at the Southern Cross. Late at night, after eating one of her desserts, Tom and Amanda kiss and then float up to the ceiling. Scared, Tom accuses Amanda of witchcraft and leaves. Tom's boss tastes Amanda's cooking and hires her for Bendel's opening night. Her cooking on the night is a huge success, but Tom still refuses to talk to her. He sees her leaving the restaurant and calls her back. They reconcile their differences and rejoin the party.

Review

A debut effort from writer Judith Roberts and director Mark Tarlov (producer of Pecker), Simply Irresistible is a befuddled attempt at producing a star vehicle for Sarah Michelle Gellar (television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Here a plot with obvious Pretty Woman overtones has incorporated moments from recent food-obsessed films such as Big Night and Tampopo to create a flat romantic comedy that's shockingly free of narrative momentum.

Everything in Simply Irresistible is telegraphed and writ large. Gellar's Amanda is an average chef who needs to move on to greater things, while Tom is a successful businessman who predictably just happens to have a new restaurant on his hands. That's the blunt set-up, and the rest of the film procrastinates until Amanda finally hooks Tom and his restaurant. During this time, rather than show Amanda's gradually improving cooking skills, Simply Irresistible makes a fatal error by introducing the concept of the skill-bestowing magic crab.

A lazy contrivance, the crab punctures the film full of plot holes: because Amanda's improved cooking skills are exclusively derived from this magic crab, technically she's still an average cook throughout the film, and the Cinderella-style resolution - where she lays on the wildly successful spread for the Bendel's opening do - rings false. Amanda apparently doesn't know that the crab is responsible for her new-found culinary confidence, but then she refuses to kill it, commenting obliquely, "I just don't think he's your normal crab!" There are no rules for the crab's magic either - after eating, Tom's girlfriend explodes with uncontrollable rage and Tom and Amanda float up to the ceiling, while most customers simply groan in ecstasy.

These moments recall the gustatory orgasms of Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate, but Simply Irresistible suffers badly in comparison, the ethnicity and magical realism of the former replaced by the latter's Waspish ascendancy and crass fantasy. Simply Irresistible adheres rigidly to classic dialogue-led conventions, apart from one formal flourish - Amanda's musical flashback to her romantic moments with Tom - which is embarrassingly weak. The lack of ambient sound in the Southern Cross restaurant scenes is particularly jarring, especially since we often cut to them from a noisy Manhattan exterior, giving the film the artificial air that surrounds such studio-shot sitcoms as Friends.

Notable performers are wasted in the midst of all this. Patricia Clarkson and Dylan Baker, who gave such eviscerating turns in, respectively, High Art and Happiness, are barely stretched in supporting roles. And though this is Gellar's star vehicle, she must struggle through such banal lines as "My whole life was ordinary, and then we met and these amazing things started to happen!" The fact that she has to play a character who's little more than a crab's talentless stooge, who looks pretty in a Todd Oldham gown and can't wait to be swept off her feet by a millionaire playboy makes you wonder what attracted her to the role in the first place and only adds to the misjudged tone of Simply Irresistible.

Credits

Producers
John Fiedler
Jon Amiel
Joseph M. Caracciolo Jr
Screenplay
Judith Roberts
Director of Photography
Robert Stevens
Editor
Paul Karasick
Production Designers
John Kasarda
William Barclay
Music
Gil Goldstein
©Monarchy Enterprises, B.V. and Regency Entertainment (USA), Inc.
Production Companies
Regency Entertainment presents a Polar production in association with Taurus Film
Executive Producers
Arnon Milchan
Elisabeth Robinson
Co-producer
Brian Maas
Production Controller
Bonnie Daniels
Production Co-ordinator
Peter Schon
Unit Production Manager
Mary-Jane April
Location Manager
Michael Kriaris
Post-production Supervisor:
Amanda Cadman
Co-ordinator:
Reina Platt
Assistant Directors
J. Miller Tobin
Tom Reilly
Evan Labb
Patrick J. Mangan
Continuity
Mary A. Kelly
Casting
Billy Hopkins
Suzanne Smith
Kerry Barden
New York, Associates:
Jennifer McNamara
Mark Bennett
Los Angeles, Associate:
Deborah Maxwell-Dion
ADR Voice:
Barbara Harris
Camera Operator
Michael Caracciolo
Special Effects Co-ordinator
Connie Brink Sr
Special Effects Technicians
Harold McConnell Jr
Charlie Simenak
Crab Created/Operated
Paul Mantell
Art Directors
Beth Kuhn
Caty Maxey
Set Decorator
Justin Scoppa
Costume Designer
Katherine Jane Bryant
Sarah Michelle Gellar's Wardrobe
Todd Oldham
Wardrobe Supervisors
Pamela Aaron
Diedra Govan
Key Make-up Artist
Caryn Brostoff
Make-up Artist
Nicki Ledermann
Key Hair Stylist
Judi Goodman
Hair Stylist
Stephen Bishop
Main Title Design
John Paolini
Titles/Opticals
The Effects House
Music Supervisor
Christopher Brooks
Score Engineer/Mixer
Ed Rak
Music Consultants
Spring Aspers
Allan Kaufman
Soundtrack
"Little King" by Phillip Roebuck, performed by The Hollowbodies; "Angel of the Forever Sleep" by John Wozniak, performed by Marcy Playground; "Beautiful Girls" by/performed by Chris Lloyd; "That Old Black Magic" by Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer; "Falling" by/performed by Donna Lewis; "Got the Girl (Boy from Panema)" by Michael Reiss, Craig Kafton, Steve Greenberg, performed by Michael Reiss; "Take Your Time" by/performed by Lori Carson; "Every Little Thing (He) Does Is Magic" by Sting, performed by Shawn Colvin; "Secret Smile" by Dan Wilson, performed by Semisonic; "Once in a Blue Moon" by Donald J. Markowitz, Sydney Forest, Russell Kunkel, performed by Sydney Forest; "Bewitched" by Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, performed by Katalina; "Busted" by Andy Goldmark, Mark Mueller, performed by Jennifer Paige
Choreography
Jerry Mitchell
Sound Mixer
Billy Sarokin
Supervising Re-recording Mixer
Robin O'Donoghue
Re-recording Mixer
Dominic Lester
Supervising Sound Editor
John Nutt
Sound Effects Editors
Kyrsten Mate Comoglio
James LeBrecht
Foley
Artists:
Margie O'Malley
Marnie Moore
Recordist:
Steve Fontano
Mixer:
Ben Conrad
Editor:
Patti Tauscher
Food
Production:
Tim Kopek
Executive Chef:
Colin Alevras
Food Stylist:
Michael Bordinaro
Dishes Conceived by
Andrew Carmellini
Cast
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Amanda Shelton
Sean Patrick Flanery
Tom Bartlett
Patricia Clarkson
Lois McNally, Tom's P.A.
Dylan Baker
Jonathan Bendel
Christopher Durang
Gene O'Reilly
Larry Gilliard Jr
Nolan Traynor
Olek Krupa
Valderon
Amanda Peet
Chris, Tom's girlfriend
Betty Buckley
Aunt Stella
Andrew Seear
Frank Rogers
Meg Gibson
Hannah Wallberg
Alex Draper
François
Drew Nieporent
Gil Shapiro
Anthony Ruivivar
Ramos
Andrew McLaren
the poet
Steven Skybell
Herr Mueller, chief financier
Phyllis Somerville
Ruth
Bill Raymond
Howard
Yusef Bulos
Bill
Joseph Mosso
Abe
Harley Kaplan
Brian in shoes department
Molly Tarlow
Molly
Gabriel Macht
Charlie
Hal Robinson
Southern Cross customer
Margaret Sophie Stein
Frau Mueller
Lily Semel
Lauren
Audrey Matson
Lauren's mother
Debbon Ayer
Bendel's sales person
Marisa Zalabak
reporter
Eric Rota
sous chef at market
Kara Wethington
singer
Leslie Lyles
T.J. Russo
Certificate
PG
Distributor
20th Century Fox (UK)
8,608 feet
95 minutes 39 seconds
Dolby digital
Colour by
Technicolor
Prints by
DeLuxe
Super 35 [2.35:1]
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011