No I didn’t watch this movie today but I saw it on my shelf. It made me think of @mrgoldsdearie cooking verses which I love. I love the whole chef thing, the kitchen talk, the various dishes, the plating up and sending the orders out. I mean obviously I love the romance too but yeah I’m a sucker for the setting. Seriously if you haven’t read Gold’s Kitchen or Masterchef Storybrooke go do that.

Anyway this movie had Catherine Zeta Jones as a top chef at a posh restaurant. Her sister dies and she gets custody of her daughter. Around the same time her sous chef goes off to have a baby and a new sous chef – the eventful love interest – joins the kitchen. I can’t remember the names I haven’t watched in a while.

The chef is very particular, the sous chef is more heart not head and can be messy in the kitchen. The chef doesn’t really know what to do with this kid and so she gets her up at 5am to go to the fish market and takes her to the kitchen at night, and she winds up falling asleep in school. Cooks her posh food and then wonders why she won’t eat it etc.

The sous chef is better with the kid. Cooks her spaghetti at the restaurant one night, then goes over to chefs apartment and makes pizza etc. This makes the chef see them in a different light, they grow closer, fall in love etc. And then wind up opening their own restaurant which is more of a family diner, though they split the kitchen in two and have an actual line which the guy teases the chef about, by putting his spoon over the line etc.

I figured this could be done Rumbelle style so easily. It’s practically made for it. Chef Gold lives for his work as a top chef. He’s estranged from his son and devastated when he gets a call that says his son died but his grandson Henry lives. He brings the boy home but it’s been years since he had a kid in the house and he’s terrified because he and Neal fought a lot when he was a teenager and then Neal left home and Gold felt like it didn’t work out well.

Then at work new sous chef Belle French joins the kitchen. She is warm and bright and everything Gold isn’t. The owner of the restaurant Regina Mills has warned Gold before about his temper and manner and he thinks that Belle is his replacement.

Gold brings Henry to work and Belle talks to him and gets him to eat and Gold stiffly says thank you, maybe asks her how she did it. Henry really likes Belle and keeps asking to see her, until she comes over to the apartment. They make pizza and nearly kiss and anyway it goes on until the end when Gold quits and opens up the diner with Belle (better hours because it’s not open late at night) and they get married and then happy ever after.

Although it would be kinda heartbreaking to kill Neal. I suppose maybe not necessary. Instead Milah could have got full custody and she was killed which means Neal went back to his dad. There are options anyway.

I just saw this movie, had no idea what to expect and it was actually pretty good, ludicrous continual survival aside (falling sign over 70 stories without a scratch?) and seeing as my brain is clearly got a one track mind at the moment I started thinking Rumbelle.

Rumple would be Lincoln and Belle Jordan obviously. The director the Blue Fairy or Cora.

Need to twist it a little. Maybe have Rumple start dreaming of his son and then one day he sees him in the mess hall. New guy, Neal Helo Six and then he disappears to go to the island after just a couple of months but Rumple has been questioning the whole thing, in his cynical sarcastic manner. He investigates and finds out there is no island but where is his son? Then Belle gets called and so he saves her and the two of them go on the run.

Rumple winds up face to face with the sponsors. His counterpart is like Rumple at his worst, has thrown himself into his work, provided everything Neal wants except for time with his father. Rumple’s counterpart obviously doesn’t care about the clones, they fulfill their purpose which is saving his family.

Neal however talks to clone Rumple and it’s like a warmer version of his father, that he remembered from when he was young before his dad started making so much money which changed everything. Neal wants to help. They find out that Belle’s sponsor needs a liver transplant or she’ll die and she has a kid. Now you can give a liver without dying.

Neal tells his dad that it has to stop, that he’s grateful for his life (which his clone saved) but not at the price that was paid. That the clones clearly aren’t just meatbags, that they know what it is to live and to love, to fear and to want to survive.

The program gets unmasked. Belle voluntarily saves her sponsor. There’s a firestorm over whether clones should have rights or not. In the end the facility stays intact but they don’t kill the clones after they have given birth, donated an organ etc. If what is needed would kill them then that is the clones choice. I mean free will goes both ways. I can believe that some of the clones would think it their purpose in life. They don’t make anymore clones. The program is shut down until they work out how to do it without waking them up. They let all existing clones live and of course Rumple and Belle are happy together.

So a slightly happier end to the film. I know that what I just said happened to the clones wasn’t great but to be honest the end of the actual film kinda sucked. So what the clones know the truth? You think that would stop a company with that much money involved. They would bomb the entire facility and start again before they let it leak out and that shot of the boat aside, all we saw were the clones standing on the mountain – clumped up together and easy targets.

Alternately could go along with the film and pretend that what happened next was rosy. I mean I wish I could believe it turned out well. Lincoln and Jordan fought so hard to survive and then they went back to help the others, to do the right thing. They are good people and deserve the best. I’m just a bit cynical I guess.

Yeah good film.