Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey reunite to produce a “feel-good” tale of accepting new things and going against prejudice in THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY, the tale of an Indian family that move across the road from a Michelin Star restaurant and hope to open their own place of dining. Of course, there seems to be your usual messages of acceptance and tolerance, as disagreements soon turn into learning from one another. Helen Mirren plays the owner of he Michelin Star restaurant who gradually learns a thing or two from the exotic foreigners that have moved in.
Without trying to sound too much like a party pooper, the whole trailer comes off as very saccharine and nonsense. All the dialogue sounds as though it was written specifically for “thoughtful” and “moving” quotes to be used in the trailer. Perhaps it’s just that I love French food and Indian food that such a story has no appeal to me whatsoever, and unless Helen Mirren burns down her new competition in an act of madness, it doesn’t look as though the script will rise above predictability. The soft indie rock song is also another trailer trope that needs to die. How does it even fit in with the French or Indian cultures prevalent here?
Winfrey chose the book for adaptation herself after choosing it as one of her summer reads stating that:
It’s about human beings coming to understand other human beings and more importantly, after you get to experience or step into somebody else’s shoes or see them for a real human being, how you understand that you’re really more alike than you are different.
A fair message, but one that doesn’t really speak to me on account of being just plain lovely to everyone.
THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY is released on the 8th August in the US and on the 12th September in the UK. It stars Helen Mirren, Charlotte Le Bon, Manish Dayal, Om Puri, Juhi Chawla, Amit Shah, and Dillon Mitra.
Luke likes many things, films and penguins being among them. He's loved films since the age of 9, when STARGATE and BATMAN FOREVER changed the landscape of modern cinema as we know it. His love of film extends to all aspects of his life, with trips abroad being planned around film locations and only buying products featured in Will Smith movies. His favourite films include SEVEN SAMURAI, PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, IN BRUGES, LONE STAR, GODZILLA, and a thousand others.
