Toast

When it comes to proselytizing, some foodies are their own worst enemies, lacking the ability to educate indiscriminate eaters about nature's delectable bounty without resorting to snorts, sneers, arched eyebrows, and other mannerisms meant to connote gustative superiority.

Judging by his columns for the London-based newspaper, "The Observer," Nigel Slater at least appears to be a foodie of a different sort: Down-to-earth and genuinely fond of sharing his love of all things tasty, especially after enduring a dietary upbringing that mostly sprang forth from boiled cans, his mother's cooking method of choice. In pub parlance, he seems like a pretty good bloke, which makes "Toast," a film based on Slater's 2006 coming-of-age memoir, all the more confounding.

Growing up in the West Midlands, a child of the 1960s, the precocious Slater is a generally unhappy, if well heeled, boy (Oscar Kennedy plays the pubescent Slater). His few cheery respites come from spending time with his doting, kind-hearted mother (the always-wonderful Victoria Hamilton); from glancing furtively at the backside of the family gardener (Matthew McNulty), a free-spirited sort with the peculiar habit of indecorously changing into his work clothes; and, of course, from consuming the best grub his allowance can buy.

On the other side of the emotional ledger, is Slater's loutish father (Ken Stott), unflappably charmless and bourgeois, who gruffly resists his son's sweet-natured attempts to expose the family to cuisine slightly more challenging than jellied hams. To avoid his father's bullying as much as possible, the hypersensitive young Slater shelters himself under his mother's protective wing, with not-so-subtle Oedipal implications.

But then, after a few portentous coughs, tragedy strikes: Mom passes away, and seemingly before the body is even cold, the buxom, chain-smoking Mrs. Potter (Helena Bonham Carter) arrives to take her place. Keeping an eye on the upward-mobility prize, she progresses quickly from maid to divorc�e to second wife, securing a place in dad's stern heart thanks to her scrumptious, from-scratch cooking abilities and apparently -- if director S.J. Clarkson's sophomoric camera angles are to be believed -- her equally scrumptious caboose. Although narrative tone is a challenge for Clarkson, she can certainly light a derri�re with the best of them.

Meanwhile, Slater's junior-gourmet response to Mrs. Potter's rustic concoctions is nothing short of beatific, though, understandably, the lad has difficulty stomaching her as a ready-made replacement for his beloved mum. One would have to be insensate not to feel for the kid.

Eventually, however, the movie manages to undermine our easily won sympathies, transforming Slater from a heartbreaking smarty-pants into an obnoxious little snot, one who repeatedly and unapologetically bemoans that his father has married "the cleaner." If this abuse were only temporary (a child coping with pain through cruelty) or if Mrs. Potter were a stepmother of the fairy tale variety (instead of just a pitiable woman desperate to escape from the Estates), then Slater's class-based put-downs would be less bothersome. Alas, Slater's bile never dissipates and Mrs. Potter only becomes more pitiable, as Bonham Carter expertly sidesteps most of the script's dehumanizing traps.

After flashing forward a few years, the movie completes its venomous transition from youthful tearjerker to bizarre revenge saga, with actor Freddie Highmore brandishing a serial-killer smirk as the now adolescent Slater, whose enmity for Mrs. Potter soon reaches ludicrous extremes. No longer satisfied to simply run her down verbally, he must also steal her prized lemon meringue pie recipe, perhaps to demonstrate that there is nothing truly special about the lowborn Mrs. Potter's talents in the kitchen. In the end, Slater's strange victory over his woefully over-matched arch nemesis consists of proving that through practice, deceit, and spite, anyone can master a dish.

Julia Child and Jacques P�pin never imparted this wisdom!