This dry, low-key romantic comedy is very satisfying. Arthur is excellent, and Marshall is well cast as an automobile executive who wants to get away from his stuffy board of directors and his pushy fiancé, and finds happiness posing as a butler (initially so that Arthur can get work as part of a butler-cook team). Lionel Stander (as he often does) steals the show as the acerbic sidekick of gangster Carillo, and he's given some great lines. Carillo is pleasing, too, as the gangster who wants to live like the gentry, and who's romantically interested in Arthur, but who's willing to hold back because he's a gourmet and is even more interested in retaining her as a cook. The best thing about the film is that it never gets tripped up in excessive plot complications, or telegraphs its humor. Giving Carillo a gustatorial as well as romantic interest allows him to take certain actions without burdening the romance of the principals. And, after giving us enough of a glimpse of the snotty fiancé to know what Marshall's in for, the film has the grace not to show her face again; no silly "scheming" or tiresome bared claws. In the final scene, when all are trying to convince Arthur through a locked door that she should marry, they move from straight arguments to playing roles in a "routine," but there's no winking and signaling to signify a change in technique, it just flows quickly and naturally. The film has enough confidence in the unfolding of the relationship between the principals that the intrusion of other characters and mechanical "plot complications" can be kept to a minimum Thus Carillo's proposal and interference at the denouement serves mainly to allow Arthur to voice her feelings about Marshall, and Carillo actually brings them together rather than holding them apart. Nice film.
Review of If You Could Only Cook
