The greatest movie ever made..!

That was an excellent one.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

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.

he does a great job in a not really comfortable role. and that could not be a surprise. but, working with Helena Bonham Carter , he sustain, in better manner, the expectations inspired by the other performances. because he does a realistic Nigel Slater. because it gives a character who has small references to the lovely boy from his filmography. because the war between Nigel and his stepmother, amusing, cruel, almost grotesque, is the perfect arena for proof his talent. it is not a film about jealousy or food or black humor, crazy competition or homage to the 1960 years. it is only a too clear portrait for the mistakes and need to survive. and one of films who gives the chance to Freddie Highmore to impress.

The British always seem to have such interesting faces, and because of that their movies seems to have more depth and feeling than American movies. Toast is no exception. This movie contains little dialogue and relies much on visual communication, which could easily have turned it into one of those movies that makes you glance at your watch every twenty minutes. But the casting of such physically unique individuals makes it riveting.The dynamics of family. I know, I know. Do we really need to go there again? Yes we do, and Toast puts it out there in a raw, you-are-scarred-for-life way that we can all relate to. It hurts to watch the way Nigel Carter, the British food writer on whose biography the movie is based, hurl insults at his dying mother, knowing this behavior will haunt him in the end. It's equally hard to watch the miscommunication between father and son—this could be any home in America where parents and children seem to speaking foreign tongues to each other, tearing the already weakened fabric of parent-child relationships. It's a wonder anyone survives.But Nigel was a survivor. I liked how he listened to the voice inside him, ignoring society's pressure to fit in. In school he was the only male who chose to take home economics over shop, and he stood at his father's wedding by the cake he'd made so carefully, even though the wedding represented everything that would alienate him even further from his father. Our Nigel did it his way. I half-expected to to hear that Frank Sinatra song at some point during the film.I loved the reference to toast. "Soft inside the toasted shell, where the butter nestles in…" or something like that. I loved toast when I was growing up, and I think it is the only comfort food that doesn't have a sugar base. My personal favorite was cinnamon toast, but hey, to each his own. I have never met anyone who doesn't like toast, and it was a perfect metaphor.Which leads us to wonder, is it possible Nigel's mother was that bad a cook? Is it possible that someone could boil cans for dinner and burn them? Go see Toast. Then cook something. Feed those you love with culinary delights you enjoy making and let the sweet and savory fetes roll.Nice film.

I think Nigel Slater is the best writer about food in the English language today, and have read many of his cookbooks as though they are novels. I enjoyed TOAST, his memoir growing up in the drab late 50s and early 60s that was post-war England. Slater, the only child in a marriage of a dying mother and a cold and remote father, just makes you wish for a happy ending. Mother can't cook a lick except for making toast and mince pies. The food subjected to middle-class English households is pretty grim. Once mum is firmly dispatched, father engages a house-keeper, played with delicious relish by the wonderful Helena Bonham- Carter. She's a bit coarse, and determined to snag young Nigel's father. She does so with her superb cooking skills. But Nigel's stepmother isn't quite the monster he would have you believe (nor do I recall her being written quite that way in the memoir). In TOAST young Nigel is a sullen and angry boy (yes, his father is a cold fish), but his life is dull, with bad food. He's not abused, or mistreated, or unloved. That is a typical family of that era. I could understand his resentment of his eventual stepmother, but he is stiff-backed and cruel to her and she is mostly agreeable, holding her ground against this low-wattage brat. In the movie, Nigel decides to compete with her as a cook, and she's not having it. She pulls out all the stops and she trumps him, until his father dies. Then the older Nigel is off for his culinary career, vowing never to set eyes on his step-mother again. Frankly, my sympathies were with the stepmother, and not Nigel, as this movie disappointingly droned on. There is much charm and lovely observation in the real Slater's memoir and I wish I had suck to that only. A young Oscar Kennedy makes an impressive film debut as the younger Nigel with Freddie Highmore stuck trying to give the teenage Nigel some interest. Ken Stott is excellent, but ends up with one-note rage as Nigel's father. Victoria Hamilton imbues the role of the dying mother with a wistful sadness. The film belongs to Helena Bonham Carter. Always a good actress, even when she fails (she got Mrs. Lovett in SWEENEY TODD nearly right, but ran off the rails for lack of a real voice to sing this tough part). In a career that is now over two-decades long, she's making an indelible impression in nearly every film she takes on these days, which is terrific. Someone has to fill the shoes of Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, and Carter is more than their rightful successor. Though TOAST sports a good, game cast, it is let down by an ill-conceived approach to this story and a director who lacks a light and sensitive touch to pull it off.