The Kitchen Gets Torn Apart on Rotten Tomatoes

The number of comic book adaptations landing on screens both big and small is at an all-time high, with multiple superhero projects premiering each and every month. While some of these projects earn massive amounts of success, the sheer number of projects means they can’t all be huge hits, which The Kitchen is learning the hard way. A far cry from the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or DC Extended Universe, The Kitchen is a much more grounded tale, inspired by the Vertigo comic series by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle. While it might serve as counterprogramming to those big blockbusters, critics aren’t along for the ride, with Rotten Tomatoes calculating that only 21% of the nearly 100 reviews as positive.

In the film, it’s New York City, 1978. The 20 blocks of pawnshops, porn palaces and dive bars between 8th Avenue and the Hudson River owned by the Irish mafia and known as Hell’s Kitchen was never the easiest place to live. Or the safest. But for mob wives Kathy, Ruby and Claire–played by Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss–things are about to take a radical, dramatic turn. When their husbands are sent to prison by the FBI the women take business into their own hands, running the rackets and taking out the competition…literally.

Scroll down to see what critics are saying about The Kitchen, which is in theaters now!

Entertainment Weekly – Leah Greenblatt

“There’s so little logic or realism in the events that follow that it almost seems unfair to linger on them too long, but the stranger thing is that Berloff has three such vivid actresses at her disposal and then chooses to handicap them with such clumsy, half-dimensional characters. Even with the hackneyed dialogue and disjointed plot turns, though, their innate likeability keeps breaking through. McCarthy, who showed how fantastically she could pivot to more serious roles in last year’s Can You Ever Forgive Me — and landed a well-deserved Oscar nod — is the heartbeat of the movie, a sort of mama bear in Charlie’s Angels hair.”

You can read the full review here.

Variety – Owen Gleiberman

“Mostly, though, there’s a story that’s functional in a gloomy second-hand way. I wish Tiffany Haddish got to do more than glower, and that Margo Martindale had a bigger role as Helen, a dowdy behind-the-scenes mob queen who’s like Livia Soprano played by Mrs. Doubtfire. And I wish Andrea Berloff, who wrote World Trade Center and co-wrote Straight Outta Compton (this is her first time out as a director), portrayed the Hell’s Kitchen settings with more juice and flavor and detail — too much of the time, the film seems to be taking place in generic movie Mobville. The women are game, but there’s not enough heat in The Kitchen.”

You can read the full review here.

Chicago Sun-Times – Richard Roeper

Strong work by all, most notably the three leads, but the fine acting isn’t nearly enough to overcome a storyline that makes it increasingly difficult, and then downright impossible, to empathize with these women. When they’re underdogs who have been kicked around by life and are doing whatever they can to survive (and in some cases protect and provide for their children), we dig their outlaw spirit and their resourcefulness. And hey, some of their victims had it coming.

You can read the full review here.

Washington Post – Ann Hornaday

“Unlike such forebears as Goodfellas or American Hustle — both of which it dimly recalls — The Kitchen lacks the gravitas and subversive charge that characterizes the best gangster pictures. The visceral excitement — like the viscera themselves — has been left off screen in a film that portrays the diseased thrill of violence, but never truly interrogates it. You might be able to stand The Kitchen, but it could use a little more heat.”

You can read the full review here.

Slate – Inkoo Kang

“The Kitchen manages to avoid the cheap moralizing so common to mob movies, but the twists and turns feel more like contrivances concocted to keep the film humming toward its destination than developments that come naturally from the characters. (Given the surfeit of plot, it’s possible The Kitchen would’ve worked better as a miniseries on television, where shows like Claws and Good Girls offer their female gangsters the space to negotiate their desire for power and wealth with their hesitations and responsibilities.) McCarthy’s Kathy, the sole mother among the three women, seems to give precious little consideration to how a life of crime might impact her children, and a climactic decision makes her even harder to empathize with.”

You can read the full review here.

The AV Club – Katie Rife

“Now, along comes The Kitchen, knocking down the backroom doors of organized crime with a revolver tucked into the waistband of its polyester slacks. But while the film boasts a refreshing premise—mob wives taking over their husbands’ territory when the men land themselves in jail—what lingers afterwards is the stale taste of its lukewarm execution.”

You can read the full review here.

Polygon – Karen Han

“As with all such films, it’s only fun if there’s something solid backing it all up. All The Kitchen has are cardboard cutouts. These women haven’t really built anything, despite what they continuously proclaim. Their version of a mob empire is a bunch of murders and harassment of the local Jewish population; the film’s version of female empowerment is just as shoddy.”

You can read the full review here.