Review of The Kitchen (2019) by Rebecca31 — 29 Sep 2019

If you want to watch a crime movie with an all-female lead then do yourself a favour and watch Widows instead.

The Kitchen, no not that kitchen, Hell’s Kitchen in the 1970s. Mobster’s wives Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), Ruby (Tiffany Haddish) and Claire (Elizabeth Moss) are forced to step up and get their hands dirty when their husbands are unexpectedly arrested for a botched robbery. It may start off a bit shaky for the women but quick enough the women turn out to better at the work than the men ever were. Not that we’d really know because all the men barely have anything to do other than show up do something awful and then leave again, in fact the only interesting character in The Kitchen is the psychotic Domhnall Gleeson. Unfortunately he’s not around enough to have much of an impact. The rest of The Kitchen was just a boring mess and I couldn’t wait for it to end. I don’t feel it knew what genre to comfortably fit in, at times it’s going for a dark and gritty crime film but then swiftly moves into a comedy with an upbeat soundtrack while the women walk down the street in their new outfits smirking at what a better job they’re doing over the men. I like to see films where women are kicking ass but this is so forced I didn’t buy into it at all. You can’t just get a few popular actors, throw them into a mediocre crime movie and wing it hoping that’s enough. Spoiler alert it’s not, the result is forced, tonally all over the place and not recommended.