Why so much hype?

Sorry, this movie sucks

Good concept, poorly executed.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Chef Martha Klein (Martina Gedeck) is the tough top chef in the kitchen. She's great with food but isn't good dealing with people. She doesn't take criticism well. She has anger issues and is under orders to therapy. When her sister dies in a car accident, she is left with her saddened 8 year old niece Lina who constantly asks to go home. Lina's father is named Giuseppe living in Italy. Martha has a difficult time, and the owner hires another chef, Mario (Sergio Castellitto) to help out. There is also a divorced architect living downstairs that she is infatuated with. She struggles with the new chef, and her difficulties with Lina.This is a German movie remade later as 'No Reservations'. This one has a more compelling darker tone. The relationship between aunt and niece is much tougher and very touching. The food looks delicious. Mario provides a bit of charming comic relief. The ending is a little too neat, but it's a fine happy ending.

A German film that tells the story of chef Martha and the changes in her life and job after her orphan niece moves to her place and a new Italian chef joins the team in her restaurant. Love will be a catalyst in Martha's personal life, and also in the way she approaches food and her job as a chef.The movie is a nice mix of drama, romance, and "foodies" movie, with stereotypical characters: the flourish flirtatious Italian, the hard resilient cold German, and the rebellious troubled kid.The believability of the movie is heavily indebted to Martina Gedeck's performance as Martha and to child Maxime Foerste as her nice Lina. They both play with great conviction their respective hard characters. Sergio Castellitto is very charming as the Italian chef Mario, and plays his character with a mix of downgraded Italianism and Flourish Germanism, so to speak. The three of them have a great chemistry on camera and carry on the story well.Said this, I found that the romance story, although charming, was underdeveloped, while the struggling relationship with the kid was completely predictable and unoriginal. In fact this is just a traditional film recipe well carried on and well acted. However, the movie received an accolade of local and European awards and lead Hollywood to adapt the movie in No Reservations, adapting the plot to American tastes and turning it into a straight comedy.An enjoyable film with stereotypical characters and situations, and very good performances. Perfect for foodies!

Food and love have always been a winning pairing, since they both stimulate senses and emotions, and when they are well paired, their combination may turn into something explosive. This is true in real life and this is very intelligently portrayed in this charming movie. The risk with it was to fall into the clichè of the Italian fool, all pasta and passion, who in the ends melts the rigid German woman. Not at all, on the contrary the two main characters, Mario and Martha, belong to the emotionally deep, intense and, moreover Martha, complicated souls, revealing themselves gradually, letting the viewer enter their special world with delicacy, and slow timing.I felt sympathy with Martha, I could really feel her sense of uneasiness with men, kids, and people in general, although keeping such an emotionally deep richness inside her, but so contained and so mistrustful about feelings, about life. Sergio Castellitto as Mario is simply great, I am fond of him, he's so attractive, mainly in the way he manages to respect Martha's inner precious but difficult emotional world (superb is the scene when he lets her taste some food with her eyes blindfolded, and then letting her guess a flavour by kissing her unexpectedly).Kitchen setting is always intriguing, enhancing sense impressions of tastes, smells, and consistencies of food: the movie renders the joy and the physical pleasure which food can give with intensity, also thanks to some intriguing music by Paolo Conte ("Via con me" is a wonderful song).Eating is a pleasure, loving is a pleasure, love and food work in the same direction, but it's up to men and women to take the necessary step to make them work in perfect accordance, and to make the recipe magically successful.

The plot to Mostly Martha, a 2001 release from Germany which I recommend over the follow-up Americanized version, can't be more than basically established without introducing spoilers:The female chef of a fashionable restaurant in the port city of Hamburg schedules a visit from her sister and niece.There. That's all that can be safely said, except that the movie contains at least one major mood shift.Through early 2009, this is my favorite foreign film of the first decade of the 21st century, second only to Seabiscuit among movies from that not yet completed ten-year stretch--and, with me, ranking ahead of the several recent German historical dramas that have gotten more acclaim.The final eight and a half minutes arrive suddenly, and include three impressive minutes of musical interlude unaccompanied by any dialogue. The score to the closing credits is worth listening to, also. The ending is what stamps the movie's stature, along with a solid lead-actress performance by Martina Gedeck and a good script and capable directing by Sandra Nettelbeck.Guys, put this down on your prospective date-movie lists, and do not read or allow any reading, beforehand, of either the front or the flip side of the DVD cover. Watch with food and drink to perhaps enhance the treat, because the movie will make you hungry.