No Reservations (PG)

Hie me to the vomitorium, it's a fantastically smug and boring movie about food and romance, pumped with artificial sweeteners. Catherine Zeta Jones plays a control-freak New York chef so obsessed with her kitchen status that she's in therapy; but then we must watch her flinty heart melt under the two-pronged assault of surrogate motherhood and a hunky, opera-loving sous-chef, played by Aaron Eckhart.

Every scene, every line, goes "clunk" – I wonder if the screenwriters actually know the meaning of drama – and is helped on its way by Zeta Jones's horribly fake mid-Atlantic accent and mahogany-standard acting: there are so many false notes she could be the new Liz Hurley. Abigail Breslin (Oscar-nominated for Little Miss Sunshine) offers a small ray of light as an orphaned moppet, but she'd do well to get this ghastly farrago struck from the CV asap.