Absolutely brilliant

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

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It's a shame that HBO hired a lousy screenplay writer and made a supposedly good concept gone so bad. The scenes in this film all looked staged, contrite, and pretentious. Maria Conchita Alonso used to be a pretty good actor, but she ruined her face with terrible plastic surgery, so her face now looked so weird and out of a place in a 840+ small village in New Mexico, and played a quite unimportant and unnecessary role as the mother of the leading female character, Javiera Torres, played by Dania Ramirez, an actor with limited talent but nonetheless was also further ruined by the horrible screenplay, the dialog made her confusing, pretentious and weak. Andrew Carter who played the goofy and sneaky boy friend of Javiera Torres, was a very weird cast; a white guy existed in a 99% small Latino village, hooking up with a local single mother with a cute and smart young daughter, was such a highly unlikely ridiculous figure in this film, and his acting in this film was just terrible and fake. Santino Fontana, who played the leading character, Joel Flanagan, was trying so hard to act and look like the co-heir of his family business, but didn't look and feel like a convincing enough figure. Then, again, all the other supporting actors, playing touring retirees or other vague characters, acted terrible and awkward, also further ruined by the lousy screenplay and bad directing. Those local villagers acted so unnaturally. Beautiful locality cinematography, nice little Latino village(town?), some macro shots of the fascinating Mexican dishes. The romance? Forget about it, man. We've seen many films about the food, cuisines, family biz...but this "Off the Menu" is the weakest and the worst one.

I really enjoyed this movie. I laughed out loud at the scene in the restaurant with Javiera and Joel, when Javiera confronts the kitchen staff. I also appreciate that no impact was shown when punches were thrown. I LOVE happy endings and this one had it.

Right from the start I was disappointed in the acting, the chemistry, the script and the inaccurate portrayal of Mexican/New Mexican culture. Then I thought, oh wait! Maybe it's tongue in cheek, maybe it's satire, maybe it's meant to be like this? After a half hour or 45 minutes I realized it was just not a very good film. Couldn't even finish it. I completely agree with @andrewrye-06535 and @funambuline on this one.

This is a sweet film full of charm and delicious food! Both funny and romantic, with great chemistry between the leads Santino & Dania- It made me smile and want to share a great meal with my family!