The Hundred-Foot Journey (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Ah, cooking shows. For the last couple of years, television and movies have gotten overcrowded by different cooking formats. One might even say that it is time for different shows, that don’t revolve around baking things until they are nice and crispy, glistening with grease, let alone create movies dedicated to the subject. This review will probably suffer from cooking show tiredness, so if you’re still enthusiastic about the whole concept, feel free to add a point.
The Hundred-Foot Journey has the Kadam family move from India to the small time village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, in the south of France. After an election of some kind, the family got brutally chased out of their country, losing their mother in the process. In India, the family has a nice restaurant, where the oldest son Hassan (Manish Dayal) served as main chef. After drifting through Europe, they settle down in France. In the French village, Papa (Om Puri), still morning his lost love, buys an abandoned restaurant, in the hopes of restarting their family business and allowing his son to shine once more as cook. There is just one downside: the building is across the street (hundred feet to be precise) of a one star restaurant named “Le Saule Pleureur”, run by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). She isn’t too happy with the arrival of the foreigners with their weird habits and does her best to make them feel unwanted. Still, Papa carries on with his plans and opens “Maison Mumbai”, which soon becomes a popular dining spot.
Luckily for the Kadams, Hasam finds some help in an unexpected place. The sous-chef of “Le Saule Pleureur”, Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon), takes a fancy to the cheery cook and helps him adapt to the European cuisine by lending him some cooking books. Just when everything is going smoothly however, tragedy befalls the Kadams. A group of French nationalists commit arson, which heavily damages the restaurant and injures Hassan’s hands.
The Hundred-Foot Journey is a pretty standard romantic feel-good movie. Being produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey has that effect on films, but you can see director Lasse Hallström attempt to bring some reality into the scenes. However, whenever the scales tend to tip too much into a darker territory, Hallström seemingly realizes that he isn’t supposed to break the mold, but has to stay true to the one dimension of a feel-good movie. In doing so, he allows us to see shimmers of a far more interesting movie, which made the end result feel disappointing, especially since Hallström has proven that he can make a far movie in the same genre with his earlier work Chocolat, which even has superior cooking imagery. Speaking of the cooking, those tuning in to explore the Indian cuisine are in for a let-down. The only dish that we ever see fully cooked in an omelet, not the most exotic of all dishes, and apart from name dropping some herbs, we never see a fully cooked Indian curry.
Hellen Mirren, a respectable and always entertaining actress, doesn’t disappoint. Even with the flimsiest of scripts she manages to portray an interesting character, who probably has the biggest evolution. It’s an interesting progression, even if it’s quite predictable. The same can be said about Om Puri, who manages to put in an excellent performance and makes you take his side, even if his actions are mostly crazy. The younger actors also do a good job, especially Manish Dayal, who also gets some personal growth to portray. It’s a bit sad for Charlotte Le Bon that’s she stuck with the one-dimensional love interest role, because the little she shows hints at a good actress.
Another thing that stands out is the amount of colors being used in the film. Hallström has taken inspiration from the kitchen of India and has sprinkled bright and cheery colors on the screen. This at least makes it a visually interesting feature to watch, which goes a long way with these sorts of movies. The idea that 100 foot (that’s about 30 meters for non-Americans) can be such a distance in culture is also a nice touch, but as said before, the actual implementation lacks inspiration.
Conclusion
The Hundred-Foot Journey is a feel-good romantic comedy that lacks inspiration. It has all the right ingredients and even the recipe for a decent movie, but has been stewing for a bit too long. Still, the decent action sweetens the whole deal and some pretty shots make the medicine go in. Maybe you shouldn’t watch movies for a while, since hunger is the best sauce.
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