Eat Your Heart Out
The only surprising thing about Eat Your Heart Out is how strikingly unambitious it is. True, modern romantic comedies aren't generally distinguished by their originality, but usually the low-budget and independent ones at least try to set themselves apart. Eat Your Heart Out, by comparison, is so relentlessly generic that it should come in a plain white box with the words "twentysomething romantic comedy" emblazoned on the cover. Made in 1997 and directed by Felix Adlon (the son of filmmaker Percy Adlon, with whom he collaborated on the scripts for the semi-well-received films Younger And Younger and Salmonberries), Eat Your Heart Out tells the story of a blandly hunky chef (Christian Oliver) who dreams of writing a cookbook. Oliver's career takes off when he is given his own TV show, but in the process, he almost forgets about his blandly tomboyish best friend (Pamela Segall), with whom he is obviously meant to fall in love. Eat Your Heart Out is careful to obey all the cliches of the genre: Ambitious, suit-clad women (Laura San Giacomo, wasted as Oliver's scheming agent) must be inherently evil, while tomboys who aren't sidekicks must end up in formal clothes, prompting the romantic lead to look at them in an entirely different light. As a comedy, Eat Your Heart Out is mirthless, charmless, and laughless, and as a romance, it's arbitrary and lacking chemistry. There's a certain novelty to a film this bland and generic, but that in and of itself doesn't make Eat Your Heart Out worth seeing.
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