Les Baronnes

This film tells the story of three women who pick up their husband's job to run the neighbourhood.

There is a bit of comedy, and there is a bit of gangster in the story. However, there is not enough of both of these elements. They try to please two crowds, but end up pleasing neither. Unfortunately, the film doesn't quit work for me.

I hadn't heard of this movie before I watched it, but I was interested because of the 70's NYC setting and I'm a fan of the leading actresses. It's not perfect, but I really enjoyed it. I liked the story line of these women taking care of business while their husbands are away in a time period when that wasn't expected. There are a lot of dead bodies and murders, but it's a mob movie, so that's expected. I thought parts of the plot twist toward the end were a little anticlimactic, but otherwise a good movie. Excellent song choices, also.

"The Kitchen" seemingly sunk without a trace upon its release back in 2019, despite being an adaptation of a comic book and staring two comedy talents and the always wonderful Elisabeth Moss. Watching it now, it's easy to see why it couldn't connect.

When their low-level Irish mob husbands are sent to prison for a stick up job, three women, Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), Ruby (Tiffany Haddish) and Claire (Elisabeth Moss) short of money but with some connections, decide to step in and fill the gap. Because they actually provide the services that their husbands long since stopped delivering, they are very successful soon decide to take control of the whole of Hell's Kitchen, which draws the anger of the rest of the Irish families.

The immediate problem, and "The Kitchen" biggest failing for me was that I'm not sure what it was supposed to be. It doesn't help that I wasn't sure going in that it wasn't a comedy, as it a) sounds like a premise for a comedy and b) casts two comedic stars as two of its leads, but watching it you soon get that it isn't. So then you're left with a story about these characters coming up in organised crime, a story that's been well covered by other films before, but here, one where I never had any idea of the scale of the enterprise. They seemed initially to just be collecting from a couple of stores, but then it just seems to get bigger and more successful without ever showing us how, or what, they had to overcome to do so. And then it ends without ever reaching a conclusion. From a storyline point of view, it's a mess.

The performances are fine, I've not enjoyed all of McCarthy's comedic films, but she's probably the standout here. It's just that it's in a film that doesn't really have a story to tell.

This movie couldn't make up it's mind what kind of a movie it wanted to be (Gritty Crime Drama, Female Empowerment Vehicle, Action Adventure Ride, Anti-Hero Saga). One one hand it had a high power primary cast with an equally stellar supporting cast, on the other hand it was loosely based on a DC comic series. The acting was passionate and well articulated, yet the writing was muddled, the premise kept shifting and the resolve was unfulfilling. The acting was good but rather drowned out by the movie's lack of focus. I give this film a 6 (fair) out of 10. {Crime Drama}

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.