Console best movie i've ever seen.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

jeff-2051 The film is quite good. However, if Nigel is this big of a c*** in real life, I wish him nothing but the most tortuous suffering he deserves. Horrible human.

marfalej I like this film....it's so refreshingly funny......this film was based on the food writer, Nigel SlaterMy only complaint is that Nigel Slater (played by Oscar Kennedy as young Nigel and Freddie Highmore as teenager Nigel) is such a bratty snob who looks down on his stepmother Joan Potter (played marvelously by Helena Bonham Carter) as a lowly cleanerHe should have given her a chance....... for in the beginning of the movie she is kind to him but the latter keeps on rejecting her so Joan develops animosity towards Nigel (with good reason) and instead of kindly asking Joan (who is a superb cook) the recipe for the Lemon Meringue, he secretly spies on her when she's preparing and baking the pie.......It doesn't say in the film that Joan is only after Nigel's father's money so why downright rude to her????????Entire cast is great

davegoes The movie left me wondering who boils still sealed canned food? So I decided to read Nigel Slater's autobiography of the same name and I got my answer: No one. While his mother wasn't a keen cook and baked a Christmas cake that could anchor the Queen Mary, not once did I read that she prepared canned food that way or that she mistrusted anything unprocessed. While they did eat plenty of convenience foods, they mostly ate poorly cooked real food. Also, it was his father's idea to cook spaghetti bolognese, in fact he prepared it himself and it was Nigel who said the Parmesan cheese smelled of sick. These are only a few examples just from the beginning of the movie of the many things that where changed, exaggerated, or condensed from the book to fit a 1 1/2 hour TV movie script. Despite the many differences I found once reading the book, I did enjoy the movie which was quirky and well acted.

gregorybnyc 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.