Les Baronnes

Side note, I did not know that this film was based on a DC Vertigo comic book series. I wanted to see this because of the sheer star power in the film. Elisabeth Moss is steadily growing rightfully because of her recent role in A Handmaid's Tale. Tiffany Haddish has boomed in comedic roles recently. While Melissa McCarthy has been on the scene for a while and been in some really bad films, she has talent as evidenced in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Unfortunately, The Kitchen does not really live up to what it could have been.

The film is about three wives that come together when their mobster husbands are put in prison for three years. The women need to make a living so they start taking over the crime scene in NYC (particularly the Hell's Kitchen area) and start getting money from local businesses that they shake down, while butting heads with rival mobsters. They trio soon see an unprecedented rise in status, respect, and wealth but with that comes a great price as they make a lot of enemies.

Firstly, all three actresses are great in this. This is the strongest Tiffany Haddish performance to date as we've rarely seen her in a serious element. The writing in this film is messy, uneven, and somewhat bland. Its also hard to root for the characters. Sure, they have been put down in their relationships but they are full fledged criminals and murderers, are we meant to want them to succeed? After a while you just go through the motions and realize that what we see could have been a lot better and more engaging.

I feel like Widows does a similar story way better than The Kitchen ever could have. Its also too on the nose that this is about women coming out of the shadows of men and dropping ball jokes along the way. You can have strong female characters without having to make the gender statements. Overall, messy writing is the real downfall in a film that could have and should have offered a lot more for its viewers.

5/10

Competently made - with believable performances from Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, and the rest of its cast - but 'The Kitchen' suffers from a mediocre, paint-by-numbers script that wastes the full potential of the story.

Although I cannot fault the excellent performances of Melissa, Tiffany, or Elisabeth, who all do justice to characters that are way too complicated, the film itself left a lot to be desired. First of all the situations seemed so totally unlikely that it was hard to swallow the overall plot. Another thing that I found irritating was that there ended up being no one I felt like rooting for, and I do mean no one. Overall, not a complete waste of time, but certainly not very memorable.

Novice writer Andrea Berloff makes her directorial debut, and manages to do a better job (for a newbie) with the camera, than her story.

The story started off good and held my attention, until the boys got out of jail. Then the writing just got ridiculous, convoluted and full of plot issues, and tanked from there. The entire conflict towards the end (especially the whole 'black power' component) between McCarthy and Haddish's characters was just dumb and unnecessary. There were so many more much better options the films' direction should've headed to after the boys got out. I wanted more... more action and suspense - in good old fashion mob storytelling, instead of this equal rights and gender equality garbage.

This was more of a drama, than the gangster film it wanted to be. The gals all played their roles well, but their story was just bland and unconvincing from the start. The 102 min length felt longer with the slow pacing and some dragged out and unnecessary scenes, especially towards the end. The editing was terrible. The cinematography and score were on point.

It's certainly no female Goodfellas, nor anything close to a Scorsese film... it's a dumbed down version of Widows, albeit still enjoyable - if there's nothing better to watch.

It's a 6/10 from me.

I loved this film. The acting was great. The female leads perfect. It was so entertaining. Plenty of dark humour. I don't often leave reviews but quite honestly the negativity is totally unfounded and this movie is well worth a couple of hours of your life!