Review of The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014) by Axgrinder — 10 Sep 2014

Think of it as Slumdog Millionaire meets Julie & Julia. It’s entertaining, but rather light hearted fare. Cultural bias is the grist on which this movie turns, but the director (Lasse Hallstrom) elects for superficial treatment and resolution of the issues in favor of the typical happy ending.

The characters are all enjoyable. Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren) owns a semi-famous restaurant, located in a small French Village. Marguerite (Canadian beauty Charlotte Le Bon) toils away as a formally trained sous-chef hoping to one day to finish paying her dues and to move up to head chef.

Mumbai Restaurateur Papa Kadam (Om Puri) loses his wife and restaurant in a fire and moves his family to Europe seeking a fresh start. Channeling the spirit of his deceased wife leads him to an abandoned restaurant across the street from Madame Mallory, where he opens up an Indian restaurant. His eldest son Hassan (American born Manish Dayal), trained only by his mother, does the cooking. Although Madame Mallory rails against their presence, she ultimately acknowledges Hassan’s extraordinary cooking talent.

[Spoiler alert] Hassan is enamored with Marguerite but, it is unclear if she feels that same about him. When Madame Mallory appoints Hassan as head chef of her restaurant the movie blows past its one chance to get interesting and avoid being entirely predictable. Marguerite is angered by Hassan’s leap-frog jump over her to the position of head chef, but the movie fails to scratch below the surface. Instead, Hassan continues to advance his career by moving to Paris, leaving Marguerite behind.

Hassan finds that his life in Paris is lacking and that his food no longer tastes the way he wants it to. He has an epiphany in which he recognizes or remembers that the flavors in the spices and other ingredients in his dishes come from the land on which they are grown. Thus, he gives up Paris and returns to the South of France where he assumes control of Madame Mallory’s restaurant and makes Marguerite his partner and everyone lives happily ever after.