Simply Irresistible (1999)

This is my feel good movie!
You ever have those days where you are just feeling sort of down, for no real reason, and you just don't know why you are in a funk? For days like that I pull out this movie. I don't know why, or how, but it has become one of my favorite movies. It isn't the best movie in the world, but it is very cute and if you are just looking for a cute movie without all of the "R" rating stuff that makes movies hard to watch now-a-days, this is your movie. I would definately suggest this movie.

cool
This is a great movie and I would recommend it to anyone wh like a little magic mixed with a like romance.

A really stupid movie
I'm a Buffy fan and I really like Sarah Michelle Gellar (who here plays "Amanda," a petite, oh-so-cute mini-chef with fakey looking red hair). I also like all sorts of movies, especially romantic ones, set in the Big Apple with lavish department store scenes and lots of outfits. And I'm a sucker for magic.

But, despite (or maybe because of) having all of the above, this film doesn't work. The magic is a substitute for a real plot. A weird little crab, apparently sent by Amanda's dead mother, casts a spell over her cooking, so that she can find the man of her dreams and save the family restaurant. And yes, it is as bad as it sounds. (I kept waiting for someone accidentally to throw the crab into a pot of boiling water, but sadly this does not happen.) The film can't seem to decide whether it wants to be "Who's Got Mail?" or "Harry Potter." The characters are even confused. "That's no ordinary crab," observes Amanda in the middle of the film. No duh! What interest can we find in characters who are being manipulated by a crustacean?

The scenes (and there is more than one) where Amanda throws vanilla orchids into a pot of cream to produce a huge amount of dry-ice fog are truly dreadful. Following one of them, she and her boyfriend, restaurant entrepreneur Tom Bartlett played by Sean Patrick Flanery (whose perfectly moussed hair somewhat belies the emotional disturbance he is supposed to be feeling), dance to a band that only they and the audience can hear. "What about that band?" asks Amanda. "It was a hallucination," replies Tom.

One can only wish. But this film is real, all too real.