The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

The Hundred Foot Journey is an uplifting, feel good comedy bursting with passion. When the Kadam family open an Indian restaurant a hundred feet from a Michelin Starred French restaurant, the ice proprietor heavily protests their presence. However, as both worlds collide they find an unlikely source of compromise, which will change both of their establishments forever.

Overall Review Score

2.5 out of 10

Review

Based on Richard Morais’s 2010 book of the same name, The Hundred Foot Journey is a 2014, 118-minute, comedy starring Helen Mirren that centres around two restaurants – one serving French food and other serving Indian food – located a hundred feet apart competing for business. While the film had the potential to become a unique comedic masterpiece, it suffers from many serious problems. Firstly, the characters feel flat and one-dimensional. They clumsily move around a very predictable, easily forgettable script. Secondly, the film's comedic value is very limited to the point it would have been better if it had been marketed as a drama. Thirdly, due to the amount of cooking scenes, the film comes across as an elongated TV cookery show rather than a serious comedic film. Fourthly, the film’s emotional storyline fails to connect with the audience, as it feels predictable and contains many feel-good comedy clichés. Overall, the Hundred Foot Journey is too long and contains very little entertainment value to sustain its 118-minute run time. Although it could have been a decent film if the director, Lasse Hallstrom, and writer, Steven Knight, focused on the emotional, human elements surrounding two similar businesses competing against each other and ramped up the comedy by having the chefs engage in kitchen mishaps or deal with ludicrously silly customers. However, as it currently stands, it is a film best avoided.

Reviewer 1's score & comments:

Score: 2 out of 10

Comments:

The Hundred Foot Journey is a 118-minute film that had the potential to be bursting with flavour, passion, and energy. However, it fails to create any sort of culinary masterpiece, instead the story only offers up a quick appetizer, detailing how Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal) learnt his culinary skills, before letting the audience stew in a rather weak plot. The entire film seemed to trudge along at a snail's pace and often had me boiling over with disappointment as it delivered a predictable story, somewhat stale acting and an unbelievably long run time that could have easily been shortened without missing out any of the plot. All in all the Hundred Foot Journey left me feeling deflated, like a bad crème brulee and failed to be inspiring enough to be awarded a score equal to that of a Michelin star.

Reviewer 2's score & comments:

Score: 3 out of 10

Comments:

The Hundred Foot Journey is, in its most basic form, a load of old crockery. Despite a rather unusual comedic premise of two restaurants competing for business, which could have worked had the script contained the necessary ingredients, the audience is treated to 118-minute rip-off of Masterchef complete with the obligatory scenes of vegetable cutting, cream whisking, ingredient sourcing, food flavouring and cuisine judging courtesy of Helen Mirren. These cooking interludes, while mildly entertaining, made the competition sub-plot feel like a naan issue. Overall, The Hundred Foot Journey was a very ambitious film that had a low margarine for error. It failed to ignite the audience’s taste buds and left me wondering if the cast should be charged with a salt with a deadly weapon for their poor performances.

#comedy #helenmirren