Starring: Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, and Charlotte Le Bon
Directed by: Lasse Hallström
Screenplay by: Steven Knight
Based on the book by Richard C. Morais
A word of advice, don't see this movie on an empty stomach. I've never been made so hungry by watching a movie until I saw this film.
The Kadam family has just moved to a small town in France from India to start a restaurant. They want to introduce the people there to the delights of Indian cuisine. Across the street from where they open the restaurant is the best restaurant in town, owned by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). Her restaurant is known throughout France and specializes in fine French cuisine. She is confident that the Kadam family's restaurant will fail and fail miserably because the people will not want to try Indian food. The family thinks otherwise.
As time passes, the Indian restaurant becomes more popular and the Kadams are able to stay in business. Eventually, Madame Mallory figures out that they have an ingredient to their success that she doesn't, the main chef, Hassan (Manish Dayal). He is the master chef behind the Kadams' success and now Madame Mallory wants to steal him away so that her restaurant can gain more national recognition. How will all of this play out? You'll just have to feast your eyes on the rest of this movie to find out.
The film plays out somewhat like an extremely dramatized version of "Top Chef" or one of those other Food Network competition shows. However, in those shows, different rounds are separated by different courses of food. In this film, different "rounds" are separated by the time. So, if both restaurants survive one day, they have both passed the "round."
The story is laid out pretty much as you would expect a film like this to be. There are both external conflicts (example: the restaurants basically waging war on each other to drive the other out of business) and internal conflicts (example: tensions among members of the Kadam family as well as tensions between Madame Mallory and her staff). One of my complaints is that the family's restaurant seems to play a significantly larger role in the film than Madame Mallory's. We become much more familiar with the Kadams than with Madame Mallory's kitchen staff. In this way, the film seems one sided, in favor of the family.
Helen Mirren is superb, delivering a performance that only bolsters the notion that she is one of the finest actresses in the business today. Om Puri and Manish Dayal both deliver performances such that one can forget that they are actors. They seem completely natural in their roles.
As I said in the beginning, don't see this film if you're hungry. Normally I get popcorn at the movies, but this film happened to be one where I decided not to get popcorn. A few minutes into the film, as soon as they started talking about the various foods that the Kadams prepared in their old restaurant in India, I got hungry and really regretted not getting that popcorn to begin with. The food looks incredible and made me seriously want to eat Indian food (I'm not the biggest fan of French food, but I would still eat the stuff they made in this film). In short, if you're not hungry and want to be hungry, I suggest seeing this film.
I give The Hundred-Foot Journey a B.
Directed by: Lasse Hallström
Screenplay by: Steven Knight
Based on the book by Richard C. Morais
A word of advice, don't see this movie on an empty stomach. I've never been made so hungry by watching a movie until I saw this film.
The Kadam family has just moved to a small town in France from India to start a restaurant. They want to introduce the people there to the delights of Indian cuisine. Across the street from where they open the restaurant is the best restaurant in town, owned by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). Her restaurant is known throughout France and specializes in fine French cuisine. She is confident that the Kadam family's restaurant will fail and fail miserably because the people will not want to try Indian food. The family thinks otherwise.
As time passes, the Indian restaurant becomes more popular and the Kadams are able to stay in business. Eventually, Madame Mallory figures out that they have an ingredient to their success that she doesn't, the main chef, Hassan (Manish Dayal). He is the master chef behind the Kadams' success and now Madame Mallory wants to steal him away so that her restaurant can gain more national recognition. How will all of this play out? You'll just have to feast your eyes on the rest of this movie to find out.
The film plays out somewhat like an extremely dramatized version of "Top Chef" or one of those other Food Network competition shows. However, in those shows, different rounds are separated by different courses of food. In this film, different "rounds" are separated by the time. So, if both restaurants survive one day, they have both passed the "round."
The story is laid out pretty much as you would expect a film like this to be. There are both external conflicts (example: the restaurants basically waging war on each other to drive the other out of business) and internal conflicts (example: tensions among members of the Kadam family as well as tensions between Madame Mallory and her staff). One of my complaints is that the family's restaurant seems to play a significantly larger role in the film than Madame Mallory's. We become much more familiar with the Kadams than with Madame Mallory's kitchen staff. In this way, the film seems one sided, in favor of the family.
Helen Mirren is superb, delivering a performance that only bolsters the notion that she is one of the finest actresses in the business today. Om Puri and Manish Dayal both deliver performances such that one can forget that they are actors. They seem completely natural in their roles.
As I said in the beginning, don't see this film if you're hungry. Normally I get popcorn at the movies, but this film happened to be one where I decided not to get popcorn. A few minutes into the film, as soon as they started talking about the various foods that the Kadams prepared in their old restaurant in India, I got hungry and really regretted not getting that popcorn to begin with. The food looks incredible and made me seriously want to eat Indian food (I'm not the biggest fan of French food, but I would still eat the stuff they made in this film). In short, if you're not hungry and want to be hungry, I suggest seeing this film.
I give The Hundred-Foot Journey a B.
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