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“The Hundred-Foot Journey” is a film that demands that you take it seriously. With its feel-good themes of multicultural understanding, it is about Something Important. It even comes with the stamp of approval from titanic tastemakers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg , who both serve as producers. What more convincing could you possibly need?

There’s something familiar about the treacly and sanctimonious way this film is being packaged. It reeks of late-‘90s/early ‘00s Miramax fare: films with tasteful yet ubiquitous ad campaigns and unabashed Oscar aspirations which suggested that seeing them (and, more importantly, voting for them) would make you a better person. Films like “The Cider House Rules,” “Chocolat” and “The Shipping News.” Films by Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom.

Hallstrom just happens to be the director here, as well, and the similarities to “Chocolat” are inescapable. Stop me if think you’ve heard this one before: A family moves into a quaint but closed-minded French village and shakes things up with an enticing array of culinary delicacies. This new enterprise happens to sit across the street from a conservative and revered building that’s a town treasure. But the food in question isn’t a bon bon this time—rather, the movie is the bon bon itself.

But despite being handsomely crafted, well acted and even sufficiently enjoyable, “The Hundred-Foot Journey” is also conventional and predictable. And for a film that’s all about opening up your senses and sampling spicy, exotic tastes, this comic drama is entirely too safe and even a little bland.

What livens things up, though, is the interplay between Helen Mirren and Om Puri as battling restaurant owners operating across the street from each other—100 feet away from each other, to be exact, a short but fraught trip that various characters take for various reasons. Watching these veteran actors stoop to sabotage each other provides a consistent source of laughs. She’s all sharp angles, piercing looks and biting quips; he’s all round joviality, boisterous blasts and warmhearted optimism. The contrast between the British Oscar-winner and the Indian acting legend offers the only tension in this otherwise soft and gooey dish—that is, until the film goes all soft and gooey, too.

Mirren stars as Madame Mallory, owner of Le Saule Pleurer (The Weeping Willow), an elegant and expensive French restaurant that’s the winner of a prestigious Michelin star. But one star isn’t enough for the coldly driven Mme. Mallory—she wants another, and then another.

But her bloodless quest for gourmet grandeur is interrupted by the arrival across the street of an Indian family: the Kadams, who’ve been wandering around Europe ever since their beloved restaurant back home burned down during political rioting. When the brakes on their car malfunction on a treacherous stretch of spectacular countryside, Papa (Puri) insists it’s a sign from his late wife and decides to open a new eatery in the charming town at the bottom of the hill.

Never mind that one of the most celebrated restaurants in all of France is sitting right across the street from the empty building he rents. Never mind that they are in an insular part of the country where the residents probably don’t even know what Indian cuisine is, much less like it, as his children point out. He has faith in his food—and in his son, Hassan ( Manish Dayal ), a brilliant, young chef.

Just as Papa and Mme. Mallory strike up a sparky rivalry, Hassan enjoys a flirtatious relationship with French sous chef Marguerite ( Charlotte Le Bon , who played an early model and muse in the recent “Yves Saint Laurent” biopic). The script from Steven Wright (who also wrote the far trickier “ Locke ” from earlier this year, as well as “ Dirty Pretty Things ” and “ Eastern Promises ”) is full of such tidy parallels, as well as trite and overly simplistic proclamations about how food inspires memories. Dayal and Le Bon do look lovely together, though, and share a light, enjoyable chemistry.

Then again, it all looks lovely—both the French and Indian dishes as well as the lush, rolling surroundings, which we see through all four seasons; the work of cinematographer Linus Sandgren , who recently shot “American Hustle.” This sweetly pleasing combination of ingredients would have been perfectly suitable if the film didn’t take a wild and needless detour in the third act. That’s when it becomes an even less interesting movie than it already was, in spite of its loftier aspirations.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film Credits

The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

122 minutes

Helen Mirren as Madam Mallory

Om Puri as Papa

Manish Dayal as Hassan Haji

Charlotte Le Bon as Marguerite

Amit Shah as Mansur

• Lasse Hallström
• Steven Knight
• Richard C. Morais

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• Entertainment
• REVIEW: Does <I>The Hundred-Foot Journey</i> Deserve One Michelin Star or Two?

REVIEW: Does The Hundred-Foot Journey Deserve One Michelin Star or Two?

W ith Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey serving as producers, and a story that forges warm feelings between two generations of restaurant rivals, The Hundred-Foot Journey is on a mission to make you cry. Whether you oblige will depend on your fondness for, or immunity to, the gentler stereotypes of movie romance.

But there’s one shot that should bring tears of joy to anyone who thinks of food as something more than the stuff grabbed from a plastic bag and automatically consumed on a couch during a reality show. Early in the proceedings we are shown a plate of fresh vegetables, tomatoes mostly, that a pretty young French woman offers to weary Indian travelers. Artfully arranged and glowingly photographed, the comestibles would send moviegoers rushing avidly from the auditorium to the lobby — if the concession stand were a neighborhood stall run by Edesia, the goddess of banquets .

(SEE: TIME’s flavorfully illustrated list of the Top 8 Food Movies )

The food, traditional French cuisine or the livelier Indian masala, looks delicious: what Los Angeles Times writer Jenn Harris, in an interview with Indian-American chef Floyd Cardoz, calls a “ sumptuous buffet of gastro-porn .” Although Harris was referring to the preparations by Cardoz and other cooks of the film’s incredible edibles, Spielberg and Winfrey wouldn’t mind if viewers applied the phrase to the whole movie. They want you to swallow, in one savory sitting, their tale of colliding cultures reaching an entente cordiale. That particular buffet demands a more generous palate.

Winfrey chose Richard C. Morais’ novel for her 2010 reading list and teamed with Spielberg, who had directed her in The Color Purple nearly three decades ago, to bring the story to the screen. As director they hired Lasse Hallstrom, who specializes in upmarket sentiment and in films with food-related titles: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape , The Cider House Rules , Salmon Fishing in the Yemen . His signature food movie was Chocolat , a highly caloric confection about an outsider (Juliet Binoche) who opens a pastry shop in a French village, horrifies the locals, outrages the mayor (Albert Molina) and eventually seduces all of them with her bewitching sweets. With Johnny Depp on hand as Binoche’s roguish ally, Chocolat became Hallstrom’s biggest box-office hit.

(READ: Richard Schickel’s review of Chocolat )

In The Hundred-Foot Journey , the outsiders are Papa (Bollywood stalwart Om Puri), his son Hassan (Manish Dayal) and their family of Mumbai restaurateurs, sent packing when their establishment is torched by fanatics and Papa’s wife (the great beauty Juhi Chawla) is incinerated in the fire. The French village they wind up in is the almost obscenely picturesque Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, in the Midi-Pyrénées, and the wavering mayor this time is Michel Blanc. The family’s most obstinate rival — Mme. Mallory, who owns the one-star restaurant 100 feet across the street from where Papa sets up his noisy Maison Mumbai — is played by Helen Mirren with her chin held high in defiance; Queen Elizabeth might think Mirren’s manner too imperious. And Hassan finds love and competition with Mme. Mallory’s sous-chef Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon).

The journey in the novel was essentially Hassan’s. A budding genius in creating dishes both Indian and French, he hopes to rise through the gastronomic ranks and become the most innovative chef at the hottest restaurant in Paris. He is a human version of Remy the rodent in Pixar’s Ratatouille , conquering French-foodie snobbishness with his culinary inspirations. Screenwriter Steven Knight, who has scripted modern crime movies ( Eastern Promises ) and stately period pieces ( Amazing Grace ), as well as directing the Tom-Hardy-in-a-car movie Locke , makes room for the Hassan story, but promotes age — the slow-boiling friendship of Papa and Madame — over youth and beauty.

(READ: Corliss on Tom Hardy, trapped in a car, in Steven Knight’s Locke )

Mme. Mallory’s interest in Hassan, once he convinces her of his expertise, is a matter of pride. For 30 years, her restaurant, Le Saule Pleureur (The Weeping Willow), has carried an honored but equivocal one star, out of a possible three, from the Michelin guide to French cuisine. She wants that second star and thinks the gifted Hassan can help her get it. (It happens that, a couple hundred miles to the east, in Monteux, there is an actual establishment by that name. An online reviewer wrote, “This restaurant has one Michelin star and easily deserves another.”)

As Madame, Dame Helen anglicizes aspects of two revered French actresses who might have been more suitable for the role: imagine a frosty Isabelle Huppert who thaws into Catherine Deneuve. Because this is a movie aimed at Americans, Mirren must speak English in a stern, borderline-ludicrous French accent — both to Papa and Hassan, who confer with each other in Marathi and speak perfect English but perhaps not French, and to her French kitchen staff. “In English,” she says to her balky chef Jean-Pierre (Clément Sibony), “so we can all understand.” This time, the royal “we” that Mirren used in The Queen means the non-francophone audience.

(READ: How Helen Mirren reigned and triumphed in The Queen )

If the poetry of this Franco-Indian alliance gets lost in translation, the visuals sing ecstasy in any language. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren, fresh from making the actors in American Hustle look fabulously tatty, brings radiance not just to each morsel of food but also to the dewy closeups of Dayal (born in Orangeburg, S.C.) and Le Bon (from the recent bio-pic Yves Saint Laurent ) as the lovers-in-waiting. The movie revels in scenes of dappled soft-focus — you never saw so many dapples! — and punctuates the Spielberg-starry night sky with fireworks for every occasion. Though it must acknowledge Mama’s charred death, and a spate of anti-immigrant enmity (the scrawling of “French for the French” on a Maison Mumbai wall), the film is eager to seem good enough to eat.

The one moment of earned poignancy comes when Hassan goes across the street to work at Le Seule Pleureur, and Papa offers him his treasured box of Indian spices. “They have their own spices,” the young man says in the softest tones of renunciation. In a new land, the young must learn from their old-country past, use some parts and reject others, to become a success. That’s how you season the melting pot. At this moment, viewers may shrug off the glutinous manipulations of The Hundred-Foot Journey and give it a second star in the Michelin guide to comfort-food movies.

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The Hundred-Foot Journey Reviews

Mirren is drily funny, deploying an arsenal of MasterChef-style horrified reaction shots.

Full Review | Apr 7, 2023

How wrong can you go with a comedy about beautiful people making beautiful food in the south of France? And Helen Mirren? The woman can turn 105 and she'll still be alluring, even when she's being haughty. Lots of laughs.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 19, 2022

It's an enjoyable film about passion; the passion for food, passion for culture but most of all, passion for life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 1, 2021

This isn't your usual summer fare, because it cares far too much about the people whose story it is telling and it takes the time to let you get to know them.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 11, 2020

If you're into simple, pleasant movies that offer two-hour escapist entertainment, this may be for you.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 20, 2020

[A] beautifully written story.

Full Review | Feb 5, 2020

Fulfilling, rich and delicious, The Hundred Foot Journey is an effervescent delight, sizzling with cinematic and emotional flavor.

Full Review | Dec 14, 2019

If films about the culinary arts revolved around the same strictures to obtain something like a Michelin star rating, The Hundred-Foot Journey would always and forever be a big fat zero.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 30, 2019

For foodies and folks looking for the cinematic version of a poolside paperback, THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY delivers. If you're seeking something with a little artistic nutrition, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5 | Apr 8, 2019

Overall, The Hundred-Foot Journey is not a bad dish, but considering its rich ingredients, it still lacks a bit of spice.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2019

There's an in-built contradiction between the film's attempt to position itself as an ode to cultural understanding while also being a commercially twee depiction of that tale

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 25, 2019

As you might imagine, visually, it's a stunning film, and the story is endearing. Dayal and Le Bon are charming, and Helen Mirren, well, is Helen Mirren.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 11, 2018

"The Hundred-Foot Journey" is a delicious love story portraying the melting and blending of two opposing cultures.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 21, 2018

This underachieving cooking infomercial left me starving for a decent movie experience. Cancel your reservations to this rancid soufflé.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2018

Has a lot of pedigree behind it, but is sadly unable to transcend its habit of skimming through information and any form of drama whatsoever.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 13, 2018

If you don't leave the theatre wanting to visit France and eat Indian food, then you didn't enjoy it as much as I did. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 30, 2018

With its fine cast, glorious setting, and countless scenes of mouthwatering menus, The Hundred-Foot Journey is an appetizing alternative to summer's superheroes and zombies.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Dec 3, 2017

If you can deal with the uneven narrative - and in this case there's no reason you shouldn't - there is a lot to like about this film.

Full Review | Nov 28, 2017

Reality-bites are fleeting here. This is a food fairytale which prefers the sweet to the tart, cream to the karelas of life. Yet, it takes all those tastes to create a great dish.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2017

It may play out predictably, and feature more fake fireworks than it should, but The Hundred-Foot Journey is charming, with enough heart and genuine laughs to forgive its formulaic nature.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 7, 2017

• International edition
• Australia edition
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The Hundred-Foot Journey first look review – romance on the menu

Helen Mirren and Om Puri do their best to spice up a predictable restaurant-based culture clash

A snobby French restaurateur. An Indian chef who cooks with spices from his dead mother. A cute French waif who rides a bicycle through idyllic rural France. Young love! Old recipes! With cardamoms on top! Sounds like a Lasse Hallström movie. This one comes to us from Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, who turned Richard C Morais’s book into a bestseller. The title refers to the distance between two restaurants, but it turns out to mean so much more than that. It’s symbolic of the gulf that separates cultures, peoples, individual human hearts, and, most probably, the contractually agreed distance that had to be maintained around the parking spaces of its superstar-producers during filming.

Helen Mirren plays the forbiddingly proper Madame Mallory, owner of the hugely successful Le Saule Pleureur restaurant, in the absurdly picturesque town of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, where she serves immaculate portions of classical French cooking, to a clientele that includes the French president. Her nose hoists even higher in the air, when, into the abandoned restaurant on the opposite side of her quiet road, moves a boisterous family of Indian émigrés, headed by Papa Kadam (Om Puri), to set up an Indian restaurant. How they can afford it, when they have just moved out from under the flight-path at Heathrow, is something of a mystery, but up it goes, a big garish thing, with a cut-out of the Taj Mahal in front, and the name “Maison Mumbai” spelled out in huge fairy-lights, so we find it magical, but with the U on the blink, to make sure we find it quirky.

Poor India. The country was just inches from a clean getaway – Gandhi was a distant memory, Monsoon Wedding had just about blown over – and along comes Slumdog Millionaire and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to revive the whole sorry trope of the sitar-strumming, mystically inclined subcontinent. Naturally, Papa Kadam spends much time communing with his dead wife, whose spices are sprinkled into the dishes of his eldest son Hassan (Manish Dayal), a gifted chef and Papa’s secret weapon in the restaurant war to come. “Curry is curry is it not?” sniffs Mirren in one of several lines which cunningly alert us as to the correct direction of our sympathies. “It’s called subtlety of taste,” says Mirren after Hassan sprinkles spices on to pigeon fermier rôti aux épices douces . Boo Hiss! Down with French gastro-snobs! “It’s called meanness of spirit,” replies Papa Kadam. Yay for Indian spices and colour and fairy-lights with a single letter on the fritz!

All the food looks amazing – shot in swishy slo-mo by cinematographer Linus Sandgren, it is swept on to tables with full orchestral accompaniment – but the movie so stacks the deck against snobs, vaguely and variously defined as “anyone wishing to use a cookbook”,“French people who insist on speaking French”, and “people who don’t like loud music or curry”, that it’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for the poor, black-hearted creatures. Why shouldn’t Madame Mallory object to the blasting of bombastic Indian house music, modelled on Jai Ho, day and night? And why should she be forced to watch Hassan sprinkle cardomons into bœuf bourguignon and applaud him for the heresy?

Because this is a Lasse Hallström movie, which proceeds by a twofold movement, first the erection of quaint national stereotypes, and then their dissolution. Like pushing through wet tissue paper. The great Hallström trick – and he has followed it with increasing single-mindedness as his career has progressed, from The Cider House Rules to Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – is to suggest enough of a region of the world to seem enticing but not so pungently as to be off-putting. Thus it is that setting down in rural France, one might expect to hear everyone speaking not French, which can be bothersome, but heavily accented English, in the same way that even the Nazi officers spoke English in Where Eagles Dare. And while Hallström’s Chocolat may have put paid to the run on Hollywood made by Juliette Binoche in the late 90s, this time around Hallström bypassed the thorny question of which French actress to cast as his typically French restaurateur, by casting instead the Queen of England.

He even has Papa Kadam gaze up at her, framed in her window and say, “Look at you, standing there like some queen.” Mirren demurs, nicely, as she tends to do these days, coasting on Oscar-winning hauteur, her films now one big victory lap. Which isn’t to say it’s not a pleasure. To hear her trying out a Clouseau-esque French accent (“zey asked me to keep an eye on you for zem”), or holding up a limp asparagus and sighing, “Cuisine is not a tired old marriage, it is a passionate affair of the heart”, is to realise that the test of great stars, like dromedaries, is their ability to survive on a subsistence diet. She certainly gets very little to chew on here, although she does get one great moment, upon hearing her new Michelin ranking, of stamping her feet, girlishly, a reminder that at the tender age of 69, Mirren seems younger in spirit than most ingenues.

She’s almost too feisty: by about the halfway mark the movie is effectively over. Peace has broken out. The excitements of the chopping montage have subsided. The two restaurants are as one, and the dramatic baton passes to the love-affair-rivalry between the son, Hassan, and Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon) the sous chef at Mallory’s restaurant, she of the doe eyes, French bob and peachy complexion. “You must find it in your heart then in your pots,” she tells him over a picnic one day, promisingly. “What is your favourite meal to cook?” Good question. “Food is memories,” he replies. “Ah yes,” she says “Food is memories …” And off they head, into the highways and byways of béchamel sauce. No saucy double entendres à la Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (“Leg or breast?”). These two really do want to discuss menus, so it’s no surprise when Hassan ups and heads for Paris to become a celebrity chef, dressed in black and cooking jellyfish with liquid nitrogen, in what is easily the most boring stretch of the film, which by rights should have retitled itself The Slightly Longer Than Anticipated Journey, or It Looked a Lot Smaller On The Map.

“He looks like a bloody terrorist,” growls Puri, who is probably your best bet of a good time, if you are absolutely forced to see this film at gunpoint. Bulbous of nose, white of coif, gravelly of voice, Puri projects such a delicious air of gruffness and what-me? fake innocence that he threatens to flip the film into altogether more rueful and salty territory. He’s a lovely bundle of fondness and nerves as he edges up to calling Madame Mallory his “almost-girlfriend”, and is rewarded with a waltz around her chandelier-lit parlour. Those youngsters could learn a thing or two. Is he enough to shell out for this film? Almost.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is in US theatres from 8 August. It will be released in the UK on 5 September.

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• First look review
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The hundred-foot journey, common sense media reviewers.

Cultures clash in the kitchen in warm family drama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Home is wherever your family is. The film also str

Hassan is briefly seduced by fame and fortune, but

An angry mob storms a restaurant and burns it to t

Two characters share a few kisses, and in one scen

Some characters use the British exclamation "blood

Repeated mentions of the Michelin guide to French

Adults often drink wine with meals. One character

Parents need to know that Lasse Hallstrom's The Hundred-Food Journey follows the journey of Hassan (Manish Dayal), a young and extremely talented chef, and his/his family's culture clash with rival restaurateur Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). The many mouth-watering food scenes are often accompanied by wine,…

Positive Messages

Home is wherever your family is. The film also stresses the importance of accepting differences in other people, including cultures and cuisines. Love of family and cooking are prominent themes.

Positive Role Models

Hassan is briefly seduced by fame and fortune, but he eventually realizes that family is more important. A snobby woman learns that she should be more open to accepting people who have different customs.

Violence & Scariness

An angry mob storms a restaurant and burns it to the ground, leading to a sad death. Later, two men deface and try to burn down another building in the dead of night; a main character is injured as a result of the fire.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two characters share a few kisses, and in one scene, they emerge from a back room hastily putting their clothes back on, suggesting they've shared an intimate moment.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Some characters use the British exclamation "bloody"; also a mumbled use of "s--t," plus "hell" and "oh God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Repeated mentions of the Michelin guide to French dining and its famous star system for rating restaurants.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults often drink wine with meals. One character is later shown drinking frequently to suggest that he's slipping into depression.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Lasse Hallstrom 's The Hundred-Food Journey follows the journey of Hassan (Manish Dayal), a young and extremely talented chef, and his/his family's culture clash with rival restaurateur Madame Mallory ( Helen Mirren ). The many mouth-watering food scenes are often accompanied by wine, and there are some scenes in which one character starts to drink a bit more heavily (to suggest depression). Two brief moments feature some violence (including one in which men throw fire bombs) -- one of which causes a sad death. There are also a few romantic kisses and suggestions of intimacy and language along the lines of "bloody." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (5)
• Kids say (11)

Based on 5 parent reviews

Absolutely fantastic!

Excellent clean movie, what's the story.

After unrest drives them away from their native India to London, Hassan (Manish Dayal) and his family take to the road and find themselves stranded when their brakes fail in a small French town. Hassan's father decides it's just the spot to open an Indian restaurant. Directly across the street, Madame Mallory ( Helen Mirren ) runs another restaurant, one with a long, proud tradition of fine French dining -- and possessed of a famed Michelin star. She's not happy with her new neighbors and declares war on their rival eatery. Meanwhile, Hassan starts to fall for Marguerite, the sous chef in Mallory's kitchen, who teaches him the basics of French cuisine.

Is It Any Good?

Like beef bourguignon, one of the many dishes filmed so delectably in this production, THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY is a crowd-pleasing classic. The family story, told with empathy and love here, is its base; the food scenes that are odes to the art of cooking, framed through a cross-cultural prism, are its mea; and the gorgeous French countryside and melodic Indian music are its garnish. It's a delight to watch, especially because of the cast.

But, also just like beef bourguignon, it's not particularly inventive, even if the story centers around a young man's ingenuity in the kitchen. You know what you're getting. A true master chef -- as director Lasse Hallstrom has revealed himself to be in many previous turns at the helm -- would take a classic and turn it into something transcendent, adding elements that transform, rather than just substituting one ingredient (the location, perhaps) for another and hoping it feels different. Still, the film is big-hearted and filling enough -- so filling that it runs too long, actually -- to be a pleasant enough cinematic meal.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about bias. What does Madame Mallory think about Hassan and his family when she first meets them? Why? How do her opinions change?

Why are movies about food and cooking so appealing? How does this one compare to others you've seen?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 8, 2014
• On DVD or streaming : December 2, 2014
• Cast : Helen Mirren , Charlotte Le Bon , Manish Dayal , Om Puri
• Director : Lasse Hallstrom
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Indian/South Asian actors
• Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Cooking and Baking
• Run time : 122 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : thematic elements, some violence, language and brief sensuality
• Last updated : June 2, 2023

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The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

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Summary Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal) is a culinary ingénue. Displaced from their native India, the Kadam family, led by Papa (Om Puri), settles in the quaint village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. Filled with charm, it is both picturesque and elegant – the ideal place to settle down and open an Indian restaurant, the Maison M ... Read More

Directed By : Lasse Hallström

Written By : Steven Knight, Richard C. Morais

The Hundred-Foot Journey

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Helen Mirren

Madame mallory.

Manish Dayal

Charlotte Le Bon

Farzana Dua Elahe

Dillon mitra, aria pandya.

Michel Blanc

Clément Sibony

Jean-pierre.

Vincent Elbaz

Juhi Chawla

Alban aumard, shuna lemoine, mayor's wife, antoine blanquefort, malcolm granath, swedish chef, abhijit buddhisagar, baleine grise porter, rohan chand, hassan (7 years old), masood akhtar, arthur mazet, critic reviews.

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A story centered around an Indian family who moves to France and opens a restaurant across the street from a Michelin-starred French restaurant.

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The Hundred-Foot Journey with Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey

The recipe, the ingredients, the journey, on set with oprah winfrey, coconut chicken, rotten tomatoes® score.

Mirren is drily funny, deploying an arsenal of MasterChef-style horrified reaction shots.

How wrong can you go with a comedy about beautiful people making beautiful food in the south of France? And Helen Mirren? The woman can turn 105 and she'll still be alluring, even when she's being haughty. Lots of laughs.

It's an enjoyable film about passion; the passion for food, passion for culture but most of all, passion for life.

This isn't your usual summer fare, because it cares far too much about the people whose story it is telling and it takes the time to let you get to know them.

If you're into simple, pleasant movies that offer two-hour escapist entertainment, this may be for you.

[A] beautifully written story.

Fulfilling, rich and delicious, The Hundred Foot Journey is an effervescent delight, sizzling with cinematic and emotional flavor.

If films about the culinary arts revolved around the same strictures to obtain something like a Michelin star rating, The Hundred-Foot Journey would always and forever be a big fat zero.

For foodies and folks looking for the cinematic version of a poolside paperback, THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY delivers. If you're seeking something with a little artistic nutrition, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Overall, The Hundred-Foot Journey is not a bad dish, but considering its rich ingredients, it still lacks a bit of spice.

Additional Info

• Genre : Comedy, Drama
• Release Date : August 8, 2014
• Languages : English, Spanish
• Captions : English, Spanish
• Audio Format : 5.1

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