Queen Latifah stars in this remake of the 1950 film starring the late Sir Alex Guinness.  But like all movies this queen stars in, Latifah makes it her own.

To all the guys out there reading this, yeah this is a kind of a “chick flick,” but it’s still quite enjoyable, especially if you like Latifah’s comedic style.

Georgia Byrd is a shy mid-thirties woman in a dead-end retail sales job at department store in New Orleans, whose real passion is gourmet cooking.  At home she keeps a scrapbook of possibilities which includes everything she dreams of from high-cholesterol meals she prepares for her neighbors to marrying Sean Matthews camping equipment department at the same store she works at.

When faulty CAT scan diagnoses her with terminal illness and she’s told she has three weeks to live, Georgia liquidates all her savings bonds and heads off on her dream vacation to Europe to live life and blow her wad before her departure from life.

Staying at the same ski resort, where Georgia is staying in the $4,000-a-night presidential suite, is none other than Matthew Kragen, the owner of the department store she worked for, accompanied by a woman who is not his wife.  Kragen is there to butter up a key congressman and Louisiana Senator Dillings.  Working at the hotel is one of Georgia’s two favorite chefs, Didier.

Are you still with me?  Well after a rather complex setup, the film carries on in rather a predictable manner with various relationships forming and Latifah exuding her natural charm causing everyone to love her except for Kragen, as people begin to not like him.  Despite this predictability, the film is still enjoyable to watch and even jerks a few tears at the end with its “feel good” ending.

As far as laughs are concerned in this romantic comedy, Latifah manages to pull off a few really good laughs here and several chuckles, as opposed to her laugh-a-minute hit last year, Taxi.

Overall, Latifah (Bringing Down the House, Chicago) comes off quite well in her shyness to her living life to its fullest when she believes she’s going to die.

LL Cool J’s (Any Given Sunday, S.W.A.T.) role is minor but important as Georgia’s crush.  He comes off perfectly as a man who’s just as much in love with her as she is with him, but also just as shy as she was at the beginning to be able to tell her.

French actor Gérard Depardieu turns in a fine performance as Chef Didier as he provides a good sounding board for Latifah’s character.

Veteran actor Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, Taps) does quite well as the man you want to hate, Matthew Kragen.  Denmark born Giancarlo Esposito (The Usual Suspects, Malcolm X) also does a fair job Louisiana Senator Dillings.  Alicia Witt (Two Weeks Notice, The Upside of Anger) stars as Kragen’s traveling companion.

An interesting side note with regards to the original 1950 film, here Latifah plays Georgia Byrd, a cookware department store clerk.  In the original, Guinness played George Bird, a salesman of agricultural machinery.  It would be interesting to learn more about the original but alas it is not yet available on DVD.

While this film likely won’t win any awards, it’s probably worth at least a matinee viewing on a lazy afternoon… at the very least a DVD rental when it’s released.