Love's Kitchen (15)

Starring: Dougray Scott, Claire Forlani

Oh. My. God. The amateurishness of this Brit non-com announces itself in the opening credits – "Loves Kitchen".

Nobody involved spotted the missing apostrophe, just as nobody noticed the unutterable lameness of James Hacking's script, or else how could they have gone ahead with it? Dougray Scott plays a brooding London chef who's lost his wife in a car accident and his culinary mojo thereafter. It takes a pep-talk from his old mate Gordon Ramsay (as Himself) to get him back in the saddle, convert an old rural boozer into a gastropub and serve up his signature trifle, the merest mouthful of which transports diners into facial rapture. What's in it – crack? Dougray hates restaurant critics, allegedly, though it doesn't stop him falling in love with comely restaurant critic Claire Forlani or inviting poncey restaurant critic Simon Callow to do a TV prog on his pub, thus ensuring his interstellar success and a happy ending of Curtisian fatuousness. Every scene dies on its feet, because Hacking has no idea about dialogue, pacing, or even where to position the camera. The cast perform as if they had never acted before in their lives. Gordon Ramsay, who has never acted before, can't even do a convincing impersonation of himself.