Watch: The Hundred-Foot Journey

Directed by Lasse Hallström (Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures, 2014)

The sights and sounds—and tastes—of Mumbai, India fill the screen in the opening sequence of The Hundred-Foot Journey. They are the food memories of a young boy, Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal), who is being ushered into the soul of Indian food and cooking. “It tastes like life,” Hassan’s mother comments as the boy scoops out the flesh of a fresh sea urchin with his fingers and savors it for the first time.

The next time we see Hassan, he is a young man who has arrived in a small French village with his immigrant family, after drifting through Europe. Political violence in Mumbai destroyed their restaurant business and killed his mother. When his quirky father (Om Puri) decides to put up an Indian restaurant in the village, it sets the stage for an inevitable gastronomic war with the perfectionist Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren) who runs an upscale Michelin-starred French restaurant just 100 feet across the street.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is the cinematic rendering of Richard C. Morais’ popular novel of the same title. Led by the seasoned actors Mirren and Puri, it is a well-acted, light-hearted drama showcasing the unique flavors of two cultures, which, at once, clash in a furious boil and blend in a harmonious stew.

While an enjoyable watch, the film underconceives the potential of the “food film” genre to reflect on the profound meaning of a meal soulfully prepared and shared. Sacramentality, memory, and table fellowship—themes that resonate across cultures—come in delicate, but generous, servings in another food film, Babette’s Feast (Orion Classics, 1988). But in The Hundred-Foot Journey, they are served as appetizers, not as the main course. Instead, contrived and distracting narrative threads, introduced for sheer entertainment, muddle the recipe. For instance, you can almost see the directorial hand in the abrupt xenophobia of one of the cooks in the French restaurant that, unconvincingly, drives him to set the Indian restaurant on fire.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is a good film that could have been great. For this reason, it does not earn the equivalent of a Michelin-star rating. In the consensus of critics and cineastes—including Pope Francis who named it as his all-time favorite film—that honor instead goes to Babette’s Feast.

This is a web-only review.