Eat with Me

The characters aren't interesting, the story isn't interesting (or plausible), and the pacing is excruciatingly slow. I don't mind slow if it's good slow. This is bad slow.

There is nothing original to be seen here. All these characters--even these Asian characters--have been seen before. The dialog is completely flat. If there's an uninteresting way to say something, this writer found it. There were a couple scenes where I could pretty much say the line to come before it was said--it was that predictable and trite.

It was difficult for me to believe the central character was gay. A gay guy who owns a restaurant that's failing because the food is so dull? I don't think so. Not that we know what's wrong with the food exactly. We just know that nobody likes it. The miraculous turn-around ending of the movie was just as inexplicable. Better dumplings? Nice chairs, nice white tablecloths? Wait, what?

Dumb me. I thought I might be in for an Eat Drink Man Woman quality movie, and perhaps that's what it aspired to, but this is the polar opposite of that film.