Well, Father Geek here with WHAT'S COOKING. That's the opening film of SUNDANCE this year and our reporter Max the "world's premier gourmet" was there to taste the delights of the evening and report them back to you.So here's Max's delious little serving...
What’s Cooking? wants to be a funny-sad ode to America’s cultural diversity, set in Los Angeles at Thanksgiving. It traces the triumphs and travails of three families as they struggle to forget their prejudices, confront their demons, and make a really good holiday meal. Unfortunately, the movie’s noble intentions are blunted by its heavy-handed politics, occasional stereotyping, and tendency to manipulate. It remains an entertaining and (at points) affecting movie, but one with a slightly bitter aftertaste.
We meet a large Vietnamese clan trying to strike a balance between their traditional ways and the encroaching values of fast-food America (the hard-working matriarch cooks two Thanksgiving meals: Vietnamese food for the adults, Kentucky Fried for the children). We meet a black family whose Thanksgiving is overshadowed by the absence of their estranged son. There is a family of Mexican-Americans trying to deal with the aftermath of divorce, and a pair of Jewish parents adjusting to their daughter’s homosexuality - whi le concealing it from the other relatives. Each of these stories unfolds more or less separately, but, as in Playing by Heart (an enjoyable enough movie that should have been a play), we discover that they may not be as isolated as they appear. Each of the storylines yields some genuinely amusing moments, and some genuinely touching ones; since each also has its share of clumsiness and preachiness, it’s hard to pick a favorite. Stand-out performances (I’ll name the best from each family) include Alfre Woodard, believable and lightly comic as a woman trying to hold her life and family together; Mercedes Ruehl as a divorced mother who holds on doggedly to her playfulness and youth; Maury Chaykin as a father who has difficulty expressing his emotions but shares a heartfelt bond with the family dog; and a young actor whose name I can’t find anywhere, but who brings grace and charm to that perennially awkward situation: meeting the girlfriend’s folks.
Before the premiere screening, director Gurinder Chadha spoke about how personal the movie is for her. Perhaps too personal: the movie’s preoccupation with the infidelity of men (I counted references to at least four straying husbands) and its contempt for any kind of conservatism (political or otherwise) suggest that, despite its determinedly multi-ethnic point of view, What’s Cooking? has no intention of being evenhanded. Ironically, given the movie’s view of traditions as something that must evolve or be supplanted, Chadha has crafted a comedy-drama that often draws extensively on Hollywood convention (someone had to burn their turkey). Watching What’s Cooking, I was moved to laughter, satisfaction, sympathy, and horror. But I never quite escaped the impression that my intelligence was being insulted.
MAX...the World's Premier Gourmet
