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  • 2010
  • Not Rated
  • First Run Features
  • 1 h 27 m
  • 2010
  • Not Rated
  • First Run Features
  • 1 h 27 m

Summary Imagine a scene never before witnessed: Sixteen French pastry chefs gathered in Lyon for three intense days of mixing, piping and sculpting everything from delicate chocolates to six-foot sugar sculptures in hopes of being declared by President Nicolas Sarkozy one of the best. This is the prestigious Meilleurs Ouvriers de France competit...

Directed By: Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker

  • 2010
  • Not Rated
  • First Run Features
  • 1 h 27 m
  • 2010
  • Not Rated
  • First Run Features
  • 1 h 27 m

Kings of Pastry

Metascore Generally Favorable Based on 11 Critic Reviews
69
User Score Available after 4 ratings
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Summary Imagine a scene never before witnessed: Sixteen French pastry chefs gathered in Lyon for three intense days of mixing, piping and sculpting everything from delicate chocolates to six-foot sugar sculptures in hopes of being declared by President Nicolas Sarkozy one of the best. This is the prestigious Meilleurs Ouvriers de France competit...

Directed By: Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker

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Critic Reviews

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Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 11 Critic Reviews
69
64% Positive
7 Reviews
36% Mixed
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews

Critic Reviews

 View All
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 11 Critic Reviews
69
64% Positive
7 Reviews
36% Mixed
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews
90
The French, no one needs to be told, take food and food preparation with extreme seriousness. "There are no 'all-you-can eat' places in France," one chef sniffs in this excellent Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker documentary. "The idea is to eat small amounts of the best food."
By Kenneth Turan FULL REVIEW
75
Dec 9, 2010
Some of the creations these chefs produce defy belief (and make you wish you could jump into the screen to have a taste).
By Rene Rodriguez FULL REVIEW
75
Kings of Pastry, goes inside an intense event that few Americans know much about - a kind of tradesmen's Olympics.
By Janice Page FULL REVIEW
70
The film builds in interest and intrigue as it goes along, helped immeasurably by the directors' choice - canny or fortunate or both - of the astonishingly good-natured and likable Jacquy Pfeiffer, an Alsace-born, Chicago-based chef, as their chief protagonist.
By Mike Hale FULL REVIEW
60
The work is a brutal rite of passage that will click with anybody who has put it all out there and lost once, twice or thrice. And still got up to face the music again.
FULL REVIEW
60
Common wisdom suggests bakers are sour because they reserve the sweetness for their work. But these competitors' kindness in the face of adversity-at one point, a well-established chef breaks down in tears while his colleagues comfort him-is what sticks with you the most.
FULL REVIEW
50
Most of the culinary footage is devoted to documenting-in flat, dull DV-the finalists' piece montée, or "sugar showpiece," in which sucrose is manipulated for its chemical properties, and dessert becomes a weird, often tacky sculpture.
By Melissa Anderson FULL REVIEW

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Details

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Production Company Pennebaker Hegedus Films, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep (VPRO)
Release Date Sep 15, 2010
Duration 1 h 27 m
Rating Not Rated
Genres
Website http://www.kingsofpastry.com/
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