Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 22 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 7 Ratings

  • Starring: Joan Chen
  • Summary: You are invited to a tasty Thanksgiving dinner that will all at once transport you to four different worlds and take you home again. Coming together is the theme of What's Cooking?, Gurinder Chadha's funny, mouthwatering and deeply moving vision of 21st century diversity and the future of the American family - all set on Thanksgiving. (Trimark Pictures) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 22
  2. Negative: 2 out of 22
  1. For so brisk and entertaining a film, sharp in its observations but light in its touch, Cooking has unexpected substance and is a formidable accomplishment in that it brings dimension to its nearly 40 principal characters.
  2. What makes this movie special is the meticulous attention placed on each of its characters, employing them not in the traditional "melting pot" manner that is so common, but as part of a grand mosaic that actually seems to be worth sharing.
  3. 60
    That director and co-writer Gurinder Chadha transforms this sitcom material into a lively and charming film about the melting pot at full boil probably owes something to the fact that her own multicultural bona fides are firmly in order.
  4. 30
    Trades in sitcom stereotypes and crosscuts predictably from family to family as if under the misapprehension that equal time is a dramatic principle.

See all 22 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 1 out of 4
  1. Rosie
    8
    This film has captured that typical family holiday stress that I grew up with. Though it seemed to be a bit over the top, it was a nice attempt at inclusion of a variety of families. It's worth seeing. Expand
  2. LeonS
    2
    Overated and predicatble.

See all 4 User Reviews

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