User Reviews

The plot is obvious from the beginning. A Chef has a Best Friend who obviously has the hots for her. She gets swept off her feet by a good on paper wealthy hedge fund guy. But he's a cheater. Repeated. So she leaves him for Best Friend but gets a cute fixer upper for her suffering. Why must the better looking hedge fund guy cheat? Stereotype. Moderately watchable but just too predictable.

In the book he was attracted to her because he could change her and she was malleable. I can't believe that premise was altered for the movie. He changes her hair from mousey brown to blonde. She wasn't blonde from the start. Terrible.

I was thoroughly entertained by this movie in the "Books to Screen" series on Lifetime. I particularly enjoyed Erica Christensen's performance. Even though she did not throw the bum out at the first infidelity, she did not come across as a doormat. There was lots of Drama, but it was not over the top so as to be squirmy. I liked that the bad husband was not thoroughly evil and hateful. He did not physically or verbally abuse her, he just could not keep it zipped and wanted her to be a certain type of wife. Which she went along with until she decided not to. The movie kept me engaged through both her personal and professional development, and liked the final outcome with the fresh start with both.

Young Alice dreams of becoming a master chef and caterer. She begins by working for Madeleine's catering service in Seattle. She has two loyal friends in her bestie Em and Harry, who clearly has an attraction to Alice. But, in a whirlwind romance, Alice meets her old middle school classmate Joe Chambers. But, it turns out that this is not any ordinary Joe.

The filmmakers strive for a fairy tale with Alice working through her trials and tribulations to finally fulfill her dreams. Joe gets transferred to New York after he is caught on camera sharing the same chair with a co-worker. Alice dutifully tags along, hoping for children and a dream house in the country in Connecticut.

Multiple scenes depict Alice struggling with fertility issues. She announces when she is ovulating, and she checks the outcomes while sitting on the loo. Slowly, it dawns on her that Joe is not even interested in having children. Because he refuses to participate in fertility clinic, the filmmakers subtly suggest that he may have had a vasectomy, which he has concealed to Alice.

A shortcoming of the film is the failure to identify why Joe even wants to remain in a relationship with Alice. He forbids her to continue in her beloved catering work, and he effectively exiles her to Connecticut, while he continues with his serial philandering in New York. Why would even want to stay with her?

Inevitably, the fairly tale romance must return to Alice's attraction to Harry as her soul mate. But a complication arises when Harry and Alice's bestie Em are now a couple. It doesn't help matters when Em catches Alice and Harry engaged in a New Year's Eve smooch.

Alice finally breaks out of her selfless character when she cuts bait with Joe and begins a new catering service under the prosaic title of Alice's Eats. The plot device that is the game-changer is a mash note written by Harry to Alice and buried for three years in an old couch. Alice's discovery of the note is the catalyst for moving into action to mend her friendship with Em and to get Harry to come to Connecticut.

No longer will Alice be sleepless in Seattle. She has discovered that she is not obligated to "try to be someone that I'm not." Now, at age 37 and with her catering operation in full swing, she will be ready to take her place as a mother alongside her beloved Harry. The crowd in which Joe Chambers moved was called by Alice "the shiny people."

In this schmaltzy motion picture, Alice will be happy to take the shiny people's money for her catering gigs. But she has found her true self in her idyllic cottage in the lap of nature where she can work up a miracle meal in an hour bring it to the shiny people via Alice's Eats.