Metacritic Film

Restaurant

Starring Adrien Brody, Elise Neal, David Moscow, Simon Baker, Malcolm Jamal-Warner, and Lauryn Hill

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality, language and drug use

Palisades Pictures
Drama
107 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters April 7, 2000

Restaurant spins the tale of a group of young friends struggling to keep their dreams alive in Hoboken, New Jersey. The stories of these twenty-somethings intersect at J.T. McClure's, an upscale bar and grill where most of them make a living while chasing their ambitions on their days off. (Palisades Pictures)

WRITTEN BY
Tom Cudworth

DIRECTED BY
Eric Bross

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

62 / 100

Critic Reviews

80	LA Weekly A sharp, upbeat, well-wrought meditation on love and race that kicks the new year in movies off to a terrific start.
75	Entertainment Weekly Bruce Fretts Tom Cudworth's script nails the ale-drenched details of twentysomething existence.
73	Mr. Showbiz Juggles a few too many subplots, cramming in more issues than your average nightly newscast. But more often than not, this is a film to savor.
70	Film.com The film gets an "A" for effort, but doesn't have the courage to really get as bloody, messy and dirty as its subject matter inherently is.
70	The New York Times A. O. Scott It takes very good actors to convey this kind of nuance, and the cast of Restaurant does consistently splendid work.
67	Austin Chronicle Solid performances, capable visuals, and the honesty of the interracial subject matter make Restaurant stand out from the typical "I'm an artist, not really a waiter" pack.
63	Chicago Tribune Some films, oddly enough, can be too ambitious for their own good, which is the case with Restaurant.
63	San Francisco Examiner If Restaurant feels like a high-caliber TV drama, it's one that tries to pack an entire season (plus pilot, plus backstory) into one episode.
60	Chicago Reader Pretty familiar stuff, but the performances--by Adrien Brody, Elise Neal, Simon Baker-Denny, and Lauryn Hill--are relatively fresh and sincere.
60	TV Guide Cudworth's script gives the characters more depth than is the genre norm, and the ensemble acting is terrific.
60	Village Voice Director Eric Bross has a smooth nonstyle that serves him well until the screenplay turns melodramatic at the end.
20	Film.com It's hard to think of a single memorable line from Restaurant, even a memorably bad one.

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