Katy Breier

(On TV, February 2022) I’ve written enough positive reviews of made-for-TV food-based romantic comedies that criticizing Kiss the Cook may feel like an inconsistency, but hear me out: Indulgence is the main ingredient in the appreciation of such low-budget, low-imagination, low-daring films as those. You either buy into it or you don’t. The films seldom make much of a case for themselves, so closely do they follow structural formulas, innocuous characters, trite details and unchallenging ideas. In Kiss the Cook, for instance, a food blogger is asked to collaborate with a disgraced chef to put together a cookbook, while her ex-boyfriend (a food critic who—no surprise—was the one responsible for the chef’s restaurant closing) tries to rekindle their relationship. Their mismatched pairing is a pretext for conventional romance, while cuter actors in supporting roles also have their own thing going on. (Typically for such films, lead actress Erica Deutschman is blandly pretty, while the usual best friend/sounding board is played by the far more attractive Katy Breier.)  This is all very ordinary so far… so why my frowny face? Well, the script does itself no favours by playing right into contemporary inanity without any hint of ironic distance. In the opening moments, a likes-obsessed heroine has trouble connecting to other people in her life due to her obsessive monitoring of viewing statistics, and the film never calls her out on it beyond meek requests from friends to put her phone away. A publisher spouts audience-engagement-through-influencer propaganda as if it was something with real-world relevance, and, above all, the cookbook is seen as the measure of fame and immortality. Later on, a book is rushed to production in what feels like hours, which will be hilarious to anyone with real-world publishing experience. (Not to mention having a very relaxed attitude toward consent of what goes into a book, not to mention suspiciously convenient timing when it comes to livestreams.)  All of those—especially the romantic fairy-tale portrayal of publishing—are contrivances subservient to the romantic comedy goals of the film—and no one is expected to start questioning the modern hegemony of attention capitalism through films such as Kiss the Cook. But here’s the thing: when films ask for so much indulgence, it shouldn’t be a surprise if a few false notes end up destroying (or rather preventing) such indulgence, making the entire thing fall on itself by a hollow construction. If there’s no substance, a puff of hot air can blow it all away… no matter how cute and romantic it’s all supposed to be.