I imagine that, like me, you’ve often wondered, “What would my life be like if i’d invented food?”

That patent on bread alone could have you and yours set for lifetimes.

That’s the lead-in to a piece about food movies.

Hard not to dwell given the one-two punch of “Ratatouille” and “No Reservations.”

Although some would consider the latter a sucker punch.

“Ratatouille” set the table a few weeks ago; “No Reservations” filled the plates with comfort food today.

There’s not an original bone in the picture’s handsome body: Chilly girl meets warm boy, looses warm boy, find warm boy - along with a semblance of a personality and a little girl to care for.

A remake of the German film “Mostly Martha,” which was edgier and tighter, “No Reservations” stars Catherine Zita-Jones as an icy, control-freak chef at a swanky Manhattan restaurant.

After taking a brief time off to help her late sister’s young daughter - Abigail Breslin of “Little Miss Sunshine” - move in with her, and showing the audience that she doesn’t have a clue about child-rearing, she returns to work to find the restaurant owner has hired new sous-chef Aaron Eckart to work with her in the kitchen, and sub when she’s out.

Naturally, he’s everything she’s not: warm, spontaneous, playful, upbeat and loose.

You can fill in the rest without my help.

“No Reservations” starts well - amusing and engaging - then dissolves into a soup of sentimentality. It’s not awful but on the bland side, a little thick and hard to swallow.

It still would make a decent date movie, but better to wait for the video.

On another train of thought, “No Reservations” makes you want to eat a luscious meal; “Ratatouille” makes you want to prepare one, then devour it.

That latter’s animated but more personable than “Reservations.” (I hate to just say, “No.”)

“Big Night,” out a ‘96 with Stanley Tucci and Tony Shaloub as Italian immigrant brothers trying to make it as retauranteurs in the 1950s, also spends a good deal of time in the kitchen.

And the delicious concoctions they cook up would whet any appetite.

You also get a good look at how they prepare many of the dishes. I make a good omelet. “Big Night” taught me how to make a better one.

A nice slice-of-life piece, the film’s slow-moving but well-acted; and it makes you want to dabble in the kitchen.

“Eating Raoul,” from 1982, also leaves a nice aftertaste.

It’s a dark comedy about a couple who kill people who won’t be missed and use their remains as restaurant specials. Or something along those lines; it’s been a while since I’ve seen it. But like “Big Night,” it remains on a shelf in my memory, and there’s no expiration date.

Through the years many people have told me I need to see “Babette’s Feast,” a 1987 Danish film which they say makes the food and its creation look amazing.

So I bought a copy. And put it in a pile - where to this day it remains.

So I could call it, the remains of the day.

I pun, therefore I am.

Maybe “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” doesn’t have legs.

And maybe they only work on weekends.

And perhaps they’ll grow back after the release of the new book.

Whatever the case, the legs weren’t working at the 3:50 p.m. show at a Century theater in Contra Costa County I went to today.

I got there 10 minutes early and it was a lonely experience; I was the only one there.

Just me and the commercials: Which told me to watch two new TV shows, buy a Scion and join the National Guard.

Finally, people dribbled in: 13 in total.

I don’t know how they reacted to “Harry” but I left 2 1/2 hours later - maybe more; there were 1,000 previews before the film started - ready to go on antidepressants.

What reviews haven’t pointed out, or if they have, which they haven’t emphasized enough: “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is a movie for grown-ups.

It is darker than any of its four predecessors. Harry reflects continually on his becoming evil. The new villain - a witch from the Ministry of Magic, I forget her name - shifts from passive-aggressive to sadistic.

And Harry has his first kiss, but even that becomes tarnished.

Bring your tots. But have a child psychologist waiting in the lobby.

The magic’s still entertaining. And the kids fumbling to learn spells is amusing.

But the darkness, well, rabid fans may not bothered.

The film’s not pitch-dark, just far from the gladdening wows of previous releases.

Suggestion: Avoid it if you’re in a sour mood.

I wasn’t, but I am now; I had to watch Jim Carrey in the gawd-awful downer “The Number 23″ afterward on DVD for my column.

Carrey’s adequate, and Virginia Madsen, as his wife, is as lovely as ever.

But the story’s stupid, has no redeeming qualities, and ends like a rotten egg.

Carrey’s a dogcatcher whose wife finds a novel titled “The Number 23″ at a used bookstore, gives it to him as a birthday present, and watches his descent into madness as he becomes obsessed with the number 23, the murder in the book and the mysterious author who wrote it.

In comparison, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is “Hairspray.”

No doubt you’ve noticed:

Besides showcasing recent films, the DVD industry has become a dumping ground for bad movies and relics, aka classics.

The spate of awfulness - mostly straight-to-video drek or low-budget big-screen junk - continues next week with the release “Perfect Creature.”

It’s a vampire movie I watched two weeks ago and had to put on a second time the other day to remember the story. (I only watched parts the second time; that was more than enough, and I’m a fan of the genre.)

The in-part-one-brain-part, out-another-part aspect is a symptom of bad-movie-watching. With a little memory trolling, you call recall the basics - re. “perfect Creatures,” I remembered “vampires” and nothing else.

Dry as parchment, the story’s set in a futuristic England that resembles the Victorian era.

Genetic fooling-around resulted in a race of vampires known as The Brethren whose members have watched over humans for 300 years, inventing vaccines and sugar-free Twinkies (kidding about the Twinkies).

When genetic tampering turns one vampire into a killer of humans - for the first time in the history of the two races’ coexistence - the vamp’s brother, also a vamp, works with human police, including a somber lead investigator played by Saffron Burrows, to bring him down before he does mass damage, the specifics of which I don’t remember.

Not that it matters.

“The Hills Have Eyes II,” also out next Tuesday, received a decent big-screen run, evidently because some audiences enjoy seeing disfigured humans pull bloody intestines out of their victims and treat them like large spaghetti noodles.

The dining happens during the first 10-12 minutes of the DVD, give or take a burst of gore. ’nuff said.

Out this week from the senior set is the “Frankie & Annette MGM Movie Legends Collection,” a set of eight Annette Funicello and Franki Avalon - or Annette and Fabian - beach party, ski party and hot-rod party movies from the ’60s. A couple have plots.

“Beach Blanket Bingo” and “Beach Party” inspired the campy, long-running “Beach Blanket Babylon” show in SF - and for good reason.

The films helped define “camp.” They’re fun, they’re hokey, they’re about teens and young 20s having partying and flirting with music and dancing and the occasional campy villain.

One or two for the movies are worth a watch for the froth - but eight is overkill.

Next week on the senior circuit: “Showgirls: Fully Exposed Edition” (female drifter arrives in Vegas, becomes dancer, spouts melodramatic dialogue poorly) and “The Happy Hooker Collection,” about the woman who was a harbinger to Heidi Fleiss and the Washington, D.C., madam currently raising eyebrows and other body parts.

“The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Second Season” is also due out, though God knows why.

“Hairspray,” the musical based on the Broadway musical based on the 1988 John Waters movie (with Ricki Lake and Divine) is absolutely terrific.

It’s the most uplifting film I’ve seen in years, a rush of positive energy and good feelings that lasts long after you leave.

Top that with anything else out there this year - you can’t.

The time’s 1962, the setting’s Baltimore. The best thing on TV for high school teens is an “America Bandstand”-like show with lily-white teens dancing to an upbeat Dick Clark-like host, played by James Marsden, who also sings and is pretty darned good.

One afternoon a week is designated “Negro Day” and turned over to black teens and a host played exhuberantly by Queen Latifah.

Remember, segregation still exists.

The show’s bigoted station manager is played tightly strung with a still-thinks-she’s-a-beauty-queen attitude by a very thin Michelle Pfeiffer- who’s perfectly cast and whose singing style reminds me of Bea Arthur.

A short, comfortably plump, optimistic white teen - the Ricki Lake role in the original - played by newcomer Nikki Blonsky wants nothing more in life than to dance on the show - and see integration happen.

Blonsky’s a delight and the real deal in terms of talent; she glows - you can see it. Her amazing smile ups the wattage. She also sings very well and dances up a storm.

Her character, Tracy Turnblad, has a crush on the show’s hot male teen lead dancer and occasional singer, played by Zac Efron of “High School Musical”; the actor got a round of applause when his name appeared next to his picture during the closing credits at an advance screening I attended.

The movie, which opens July 20, scored applause, too.

John Travolta in a huge fat suit and prosthetic makeup plays Tracy’s low-self-esteem mother Edna - and he carries it off like he was born to the part originated by the late character actor Divine. Christopher Walken dances a mini-storm in a number with Travolta and acts compassionate as Tracy’s dad.

The kid gets her big break; actually she makes her big break happen. And the story spins out from there with a lot of toe-tapping songs and exciting production numbers along the way.

Just see it; you’ll get your money’s worth. It’s the year’s most entertaining film.

It’s always a pleasant surprise to read something and find a passage that resonates; that’s food for mulling.

It’s happened a couple of times with “Divisadero,” the critically appreciated new novel by Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient.”

The smoothly written story stems from a violent act that changes the relationships among two sisters and the young handyman with whom they grow up.

The passage that’s stayed with me most starts with a story about Georges Wague, a professional mime who taught his art to the French novelist Colette in 1906. He also taught her something “she already knew. That there was nothing more assuring than a mask. Under the mask she could rewrite herself into any place, in any form,” one of the sisters narrates.

“This is where I learned that sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us.”

And thus we blog.

“Fido” and “Black Sheep,” two low-budget zombie spoofs, opened last week in a few Bay Area theaters.

In contrast, the megabucks blockbuster “Transformers,” about monster robot aliens, some of whom transform into monster strucks, opened in a gazillion theaters.

Where the zombie movies are entertaining and, in the case of “Fido,” thought-provoking, “Transformers” is expensive garbage with perhaps three suspenseful sequences.

One big difference: “Transformers” is driven by special effects and has almost zero story; the zombie movies are story-driven, and the gore and blood effects act as complements.

A second different: They undead films are funny.

The message: When it comes to budgets, big isn’t better.

Or: Money can’t buy love.

Some psychologists and philosophers posit that each of us has a monster within; a darker self that’s natural, and when we acknowlege and accept it, we become more in harmony with our lives. And our lives become harmonious.

And we can laugh at ourselves a lot easier.

Unchecked, the dark side produces horrific relationships, serial killers, muggers, tailgaters (the highway kind, not the parking-lot ones),foul moods, a lack of perspective and no sense of humor.

Or so the theory goes.

Zombies can be viewed as people who walk around with their dark and light sides repressed.

The pictures also suggest that humans can be reanimated - or, if you prefer, resurrected - after death and, with “Fido” as an example, they can retain a semblance of smarts.

Our darker selves are represented by the undead dying for blood and brains.

So to speak.

Vampires? Similar but more sinister _ they retain intelligence and are aware of the difference between right and wrong which, Blade being the exception, they ignore.

Giant octopi and lizards represent what can happen if we give in to our dark sides and overfeed our pets.

Darth Vader, another kind of monster, eventually found redemption - although not before slicing off his kid’s arm.

Maybe the point of this monster madness is to make us aware of our nasty sides, realize they’re universal and not to be feared, and help us address and manage them.

Bottom line: Keep these monster movies coming - but give them sound stories so they don’t bore us to death, like “Transformers” does; there’s no guarantee we’ll be reanimated.

And anyway, we’re too young to become zombies.