Messy Kitchen a big let down
Review The Kitchen (R16, 102 mins) Directed by Andrea Berloff Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett★★
It must have seemed like a great idea at the pitch meeting: Let’s grab ourselves a little slice of the zeitgeist and put together a woman-led crime thriller.
We’ll get a top-drawer cast of proven box-office performers, hitch them up with a hugely respected writer – albeit one making their feature directing debut – base it on a deservedly cult graphic novel series about three 1970s crime widows taking up their imprisoned husband’s dodgy business practices and just wait for the critical plaudits and box-office dollars to roll in.
Only problem is, nah. It’s just not that simple. There is no formula for making a successful film. Or if there is, it still relies on every single element being perfect. And is therefore no formula at all.
The Kitchen should work. With Elisabeth Moss, Tiffany Haddish and Melissa McCarthy in the leads, a seemingly great story to tell and cinematographer Maryse Alberti (The Wrestler, Velvet Goldmine) behind the camera, surely what appears on the screen will at least be entertaining and compelling?
But no. The Kitchen isabitofa mess. And the problem should have been apparent a long time before the cameras started rolling. Put simply, the script to The Kitchen is a mess.
Writer-director Andrea Berloff has either chosen the wrong project to adapt, or not had the licence to make the cuts needed to get the eight-part comic series to a watchable and credible movie length.
On the page, The Kitchen is distinguished by a slow-burn buildup to a genuinely tense and twisted sequence of standoffs,
followed by a denouement that is bold and memorable.
Getting all of that into a script might be doable, but it sure hasn’t been achieved here.
On the screen, The Kitchen feels rushed and far too slow-moving.
Events pile up in haphazard fashion, motivations come and go with the wind, revelations arrive and then are immediately discarded.
In the leads, Moss, Haddish and McCarthy are mostly buried in the scripted non-sensicalities.
A relationship between Moss and fellow gangster Domhnall Gleeson sparks the film into life whenever the couple are on screen, but it’s never enough.
Or, the couple’s scenes only make us realise what The Kitchen is missing: clarity, focus, purpose and a sound appreciation of its own reason to exist.
This is a clumsy, oddly patronising and disappointing project. Comparisons to last year’s mostly superb Widows are damning.