The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

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The difference between someone who can cook and someone who can’t is the quality of what they produce using the same ingredients; One produces a delicious meal, while the other wastes the ingredients. The makers of The Kitchen wasted their ingredients of what could have been a good movie.

The Kitchen follows the wives of three Irish mobsters after their husbands are sentenced to three years in jail. As they try to find a way to survive, the mob’s money turns out to not nearly be enough. Mother of two, Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), violently abused Claire (Elisabeth Moss), and outsider Ruby (Tiffany Haddish) decide to take over the mafia business. Overthrowing the current regime, as well as earning the respect of the goons that work for the mafia, turns out to be a major challenge, but the biggest showdown takes place when the husbands are released.

The plot is not altogether new, but is still interesting enough to give the feature a chance. However, the main problem with The Kitchen is how shallow it is. The film quickly runs over significant events without the appropriate reactions, which makes it seem silly, choppy, and heavily montaged.

Via dailymotion.com

Another aspect the film quickly passes over is character evolution, which is an issue since the whole movie revolves on how these women needed to adapt and change in order to survive. The film makes it out like a switch is flipped and the women have just changed; Claire, when a hired hitman saves her and shows her how to get rid of a body; Kathy changes after a quick montage sporting a new hairdo; Ruby shows signs of change but goes to the extreme without proper preface.

These issues come down to the writing of the script, which in this case turned what could have been an interesting story into a superficial mess.

For the acting, Melissa McCarthy’s acting talents appear mostly in the film’s last third, yet McCarthy is convincing as a caring mother and loving wife. Elisabeth Moss’s performance as a battered wife was sympathetic if not outstanding, and her character’s transformation didn’t adequately show the power that the film supposedly gives her. Tiffany Haddish’s performance clearly showed her character’s strength and ruthlessness, but the audiences never got to find out why she is the way she is, which is mainly again the script’s fault.

The Kitchen could have been a really good movie that showed how women transform under extreme circumstances, but instead, it’s just watchable and forgettable.