When a film is produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah
Winfrey, you can get a pretty good idea of what you’re in for; The Hundred-Foot Journey is inspiration
porn, through and through, designed so explicitly for upper-middle class
middle-aged white women that it’s a marvel that the film was a theatrical
release and not shown on the Hallmark channel.
Hell, even the film’s poster appeals to that sensibility by prominently
displaying Helen Mirren as the film’s star, even though she is the film’s
primary antagonist and tangential to the narrative focus. However, a film’s primary demographic
shouldn’t be the sole indicator of a film’s quality, and yet, this film is so
steeped in formula and convention that it never becomes anything more than
average.
The crux of the film’s conflict is reminiscent of the
classic Montague/Capulet struggle from that old Shakespeare classic. (I forget the name…) A family from India moves to a French village
to set up a restaurant, and ends up across the street from an acclaimed
culinary establishment run by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). The family establishes their restaurant with
the hook that Indian cuisine will be exotic enough to entice the French palate
away from the more conventional taste of Mallory’s chefs, and this starts a
business war between the two restaurants.
Meanwhile, our main protagonist, wanna-be chef Hassan, begins developing
a romance with Marguerite, a sous chef at Mallory’s establishment.
For the most part, the film plays along to the expected
beats predictably enough, and while the performances are decent and the
dialogue is well-written, there just isn’t much here that hasn’t been done
before. It is worth noting that much
screentime is devoted to the mouthwatering culinary treats that are the center
of this narrative universe’s desire, which is hardly surprising considering
this was directed by Lasse Hallstrom of Chocolat
fame. The theme of food as a great
uniter is just as prevalent here, though the romantic angle is played down in
favor of a racial tolerance message.
It all works just fine, but again, it’s all very obvious and trite.
The only real problem with the film is that it suffers some
third act pacing issues, dragging on for way too long in order to resolve
Hassan’s character arc. If the first
two-thirds of the film had been focused on Hassan as intently, I would not have
had as much of an issue with the film’s plodding pace, but by the ninety-minute
point, the story’s primary conflict has been mostly resolved, and Hassan’s
goals and aspirations feel more like narrative loose ends than central story
elements. It doesn’t help that the generic
nature of the film’s characters makes it difficult to especially care about any
of them, so when the focus shifts almost entirely to only one of them, the film
feels slow and empty, populated with more unnecessary food montages to pad the
film out until it’s acceptable to tie the final knot.
But when all’s said and done, The Hundred-Foot Journey isn’t a bad film, and I’m sure that it
will be appealing to its primary demographic.
I’ve certainly seen worse, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s
worth your time, it might just serve to fill a couple hours if you have nothing
better to do.
Any food-obsessed films that you really like? Let me know in the comments below.
No comments:
Post a Comment