"Simply Irresistible" begins with Sarah Michelle Gellar picking up a case of crabs.
Things go downhill from there.
Actually, that's not entirely true. Despite being almost two hours long, "Irresistible" never really goes anywhere. It just dawdles along, never becoming interesting enough to pay attention to or bad enough to walk out on.
It's a perfect example of a "wallpaper movie," the kind of film that serves as pleasant background noise while you're doing something more productive, such as making out or learning all the latest gossip. After all, how dazzling can a romantic comedy be when Cupid is a crustacean?
"Irresistible" sets up Gellar as Amanda Shelton, a restaurant owner who somehow finds the dough to dress in Todd Oldham creations, even though her business is going down the tubes. Salvation arrives in the form of Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery), a go-getter who's just spent $4 million to open a swank new eatery on the top floor of the Henri Bendel department store in New York. Tom and Amanda are brought together when one of the aforementioned crabs crawls out of its case - with the help of some laughably obvious wires - and attaches itself to a leg of Tom's expensive pants.
A conversation with the rich and hunky Tom puts Amanda's hormones into overdrive, and when she returns to the kitchen she quickly shatters her reputation as a third-rate chef. In no time at all, she's gone from making soups that taste "like bleu cheese and dirt" to whipping up steamed cockles with grapefruit sauce.
The elegant entrees are the real stars of "Irresistible" and receive much more flattering photography than either Gellar or Flanery, both of whom often look like they've just returned from an all-night frat party. "Irresistible" strives for the kind of effortless sparkle of a "Breakfast at Tiffany's," but its weirdly harsh lighting and dull camera work would be better-suited to a documentary on heroin addicts.
That the movie has any allure whatsoever is due entirely to the comfortable chemistry Gellar and Flanery generate, particularly inthe scenes that have nothing to do with the silly story. Every so often they have a moment together that's so charming you wish the rest of the film could magically rise to the same level, much in the same way Amanda and Tom float onto the ceiling of her kitchen at one point.
Judith Roberts' screenplay is an uncertain brew of equal parts "Witches of Eastwick," "Pretty Woman" and "Big Night," although its most obvious inspiration is director Alfonso Arau's 1992 classic "Like Water For Chocolate." At least three scenes from that film are reprised almost verbatim - including the one in which the heroine's tears fall into a sauce and provoke crying from everyone who tastes the dish - with no credit given whatsoever to Laura Esquivel, who wrote both the novel "Chocolate" was based on and the screenplay. That's simply reprehensible.
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