While I wasn’t expecting Oscar-worthy performances from this tale of battling restaurants, I still felt slightly let down. The movie’s plot is fairly simple (as are the storylines and acting), and it was more predictable than intriguing. In the opening scenes, you learn of Hassan Kadam’s (Manish Dayal) passion for cooking, passed on to him by his mom, who heads the family restaurant. After election turmoil in India, Papa (Om Puri) instructs the Kadam family to pack up their belongings for asylum in Europe. They arrive, totally by chance, in a quaint village in the south of France. And this is where everything starts to happen just as you would expect.
When Papa finds an abandoned building, he is set on opening an Indian restaurant despite objections from his family, which stem from the fact that just 100 feet away is a Michelin-starred classical French restaurant, run by the brash Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). Despite her repeated attempts to sabotage the competition, Mallory slowly begins to accept their differences and realizes that Hassan is a master in the kitchen. It is a warm tale of acceptance—mixed with love stories and lots of mouthwatering recipes—that made for a ‘cute’ movie.
Should You See It? Wait for the DVD. —K.M.
Viewed at Chase Park plaza Cinemas
