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Created Aug 10, 2014 12:23AM PST • Edited Apr 21, 2017 08:57PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   The Hundred-Foot Journey is a feel-good, foodie movie starring Helen Mirren set in provincial France. Mature date-night movie choices get no safer. Predictable as a brasserie menu, it’s equivalently satisfying.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Helen Mirren stars as an impeccably dressed proprietor of a Michelin-starred French Provincial restaurant. Dame Mirren has no trouble with her French accent, at least to my American ears, which is all producers Oprah Winfrey & Steven Spielberg care about. Mirren is a delight in a role that only she and Meryl Streep could pull off, at least to open this movie in America. She’s the ultimate Well Put Together Woman.

   • Om Puri is destined to be her “almost boyfriend”, when he’s not fulminating with his large and attractive Indian family.
   • Manish Dayal endearingly plays his naturally talented chef of a son
   • Amit Shah, Farzana Dua Elahe, Dillon Mitra and Aria Pandya play the rest of the family
   • Juhi Chawla plays their sainted Mama
   • Charlotte Le Bon fetchingly essays a pretty French lass, who is also an ambitious sous chef
   • Michel Blanc plays a small town Mayor who never misses an opportunity to eat, with Shuna Lemoine as his disapproving Wife
   • Clément Sibony as a hot-headed French chef named Jean-Pierre

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Lasse Hallström’s directing career has careened irretrievably into a cutely commercial comfort zone the past decade or so, but he hasn’t lost his rich visual appreciation for rural settings. He’s especially adept with the sun, the moon and the seasons. Summer evenings, winter mornings and other seasonal setting changes add richness to his films, The Hundred-Foot Journey being no exception.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play OK 2.5

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Hellen Mirren may be playing the proprietor of a provincial restaurant, but there is nothing provincial about her wardrobe. Modernistic, just this side of severe, it is a collection that costume designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud should put on the market. Every chic woman in the world would love to own those looks.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Fierce 1.7

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0