StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

jadeylady96 This film is spectacular. As one who felt I related to a lot of it despite the difference of time era, it summed up not accepting what life throws at you. You don't have to put up with others if they treat you badly and this is a huge theme people should spread more. You can be whatever you want if you put your mind to it and don't let anyone stand in your way. This film was hard to watch at times for it's flashback's to my own life but definitely glad I found it.

Q-factor Someone recommended this movie to me, since I love to cook and enjoy all things about the act of cooking up wonderful things. It came up amidst a discussion of great foodie movies, and I thought I ought to watch this one, in my eternal search to find something to top the perfection that was Eat Drink Man Woman (1994).This movie fell short on multiple aspects.As a general narrative, one of the things every good story tries to do is build a sense of empathy around the protagonist. In this case he seems like a whiny, arrogant, spoilt brat and there's very little in his struggle that anyone might identify or empathise with. His relationship with his father is strained, but both his father and biological mother are portrayed as such cardboard cutout characters that they don't seem convincing at all. The mother is shown to be a lousy cook, and even the representation of this inability seems to have been overacted and exaggerated in an utterly unconvincing way. Nothing the protagonist does even paints himself in any positive light. His struggle doesn't seem greater than any that anyone watching the movie might have had to endure.The movie could have easily redeemed itself in its portrayal of food, but they only appear as cursory flashes as Helena Bonham Carter's character cook up one storm after another, with the camera barely pausing on a single dish for more than half a second. I understand this is a TV movie, but there's a clear lack of skill in the direction and writing of this movie. I think the actors did the best they could have with what they were given to work with, but the movie does really drag for the first 40 minutes or so, before Helena Bonham Carter's character shows up and actually starts to make the movie watchable. To be clear, the movie doesn't drag because it's boring, but because it's mostly spent with this annoying child who whines and throws tantrums, and his parents have no depth beyond his father hating him (unreasonably, without even trying to understand why) and mother being a good for nothing sick person.Some scenes even seem quite hard to believe, like one where the boy brings home some spaghetti to cook, and the father breaks a piece of raw spaghetti and goes 'what is this, it's so hard!' I find it extremely hard to believe that people in the UK wouldn't know how spaghetti works in the 70s.This movie began to annoy me within the first five minutes of watching it, and did nothing to relieve this, only going from bad to worse.I only chose to write this review in case another fellow culinary enthusiast decided to watch this film hoping for a great food-related movie. Don't, you will be sorely disappointed.

ruchibhimani-880-227024 An utterly tedious watch, I saw this at the film festival here in Mumbai. There is no sense of progression or screenplay, no genuine engagement in characters, and actually it's very fertile material for all these things.That it was a true story only came to me when the film ended and I saw the final card with Nigel Slater's picture. But, an interesting life doesn't make for a great film (or even a good one), if the story is not well-told.The genre 'TV Movie' is right for this film, and that is where it should remain. It works at episodes strung together, watched at comfortable intervals. It's not 'appetising' film viewing.

chaz-28 Here is how I imagine this hypothetical sequence of events. Screenwriter Lee Hall, best known for the Billy Elliot script, sat down and read Nigel Slater's autobiography. Hall loved it so much that he sat down and turned it into a screenplay named Toast. This is not unusual since the main characters in Billy Elliot and Toast are very similar. BBC One bought it instead of a film studio which should be clue number one that Toast was not going to be a potential Billy Elliot sequel. They hired a director, S.J. Clarkson, mostly known for directing TV episodes on both side of the pond such as EastEnders and Dexter. Most surprising and most perplexing, the BBC and the Toast script were able to attract acting talent, most notably Helena Bonham Carter.What did Carter see in this script? She took time out of her life the very same year both Alice in Wonderland and The King's Speech hit theaters to slap on ill-fitting kitchen attire and help bring the life and times of Nigel Slater to the world. Nigel Slater is a British food writer most notably for the Observer and previously for Marie Clair. He was born in the Midlands to repressed, but somewhat wealthy, parents who did not dedicate much time and effort into the domestic side of life.Nigel's mother played by Victoria Hamilton seems to have no experience in the kitchen whatsoever as she puts actual cans of food into boiling water and at the same time sucks on an inhaler to indicate to Nigel and the audience that something is not quite right. Nigel's father, Ken Stott, disappears to some sort of job during the day and returns home with few kind words for his son and prances on eggshells around his wife. When he tells Nigel to do something, the reason behind it is usually, "Do it for your mother" although Nigel cannot quite make sense of why eating a miserable ham would benefit his mother very much. Most conversations between Nigel and his father end in the exclamation, "You stupid, ignorant boy." Not surprisingly at all given the overt setup, Nigel's mom dies early in the film and then men are left to their own selves. This does not last very long before Helena Bonham Carter shows up as Mrs. Potter, the new house cleaner. Nigel sees straight away that the lady from local council housing has set her eyes on their nice house and well to do Mr. Slater. She goes above and beyond mere cleaning; she starts to darn socks and even cook. The allure and mysteries of cooking are a subplot so far as Nigel has never seen anyone make a proper meal before but is wise enough to recognize and agree with the axiom, "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach." Mrs. Potter knows this proverb all too well. Pies, turkeys, and potatoes all start to regularly appear on their dinner table, items which had never been there before. Nigel begins home economics training, at the expense of his popularity, to match wits with Mrs. Potter in the kitchen. His motivation for doing so is not clear. Is it jealousy for his father's affection? Does he despise Mrs. Potter so much that the one way he thinks he can get her fired is to be a better cook than she is? The Mrs. Potter character is one of the main reasons Toast is a truly horrible film. In Nigel's eyes, she is the epitome of evil; however, to every other rational human being and the audience, she is a normal woman who truly seems to take a shine to his father and even Nigel himself, although he is a true brat to her every chance he gets. She may latch on to the possibility of climbing the social ladder a bit too readily, but she is not mean. She shoulders all of the domestic responsibilities of the home and never once hits little Nigel and never even gets in a shouting match with him.Nigel's hostility wears on the audience very quickly and after a bit, just seems tired and out of place. Nigel is played by newcomer Oscar Kennedy as an eight year old and by Freddie Highmore (Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Finding Neverland) as a teenager. His animosity never recedes and by the end, I was absolutely fed up with watching him. The interactions between Nigel and his father and between Nigel and Mrs. Potter do not work. I am incredulous that anyone, especially an actress of Helena Bonham Carter's caliber, would read this script and agree it would be a good idea to turn it into a film.Stay away from Toast at all costs. Even though it is based on an autobiography, it is ridiculous, monotonous, and worst of all, despising all of the characters on the screen is no way to enjoy a film.