You’ll want to stay out of THE KITCHEN, not due to the heat but because of the stink. THE KITCHEN had all the right ingredients for a good crime thriller: a cast including Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elizabeth Moss, Domhnall Gleeson, Margo Martindale, and Common, a setting in the 1970s in New York’s gritty Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, and a femme-centric crime thriller premise about the wives of criminals taking to crime themselves when their husbands are no longer there to provide financial support. Yet is takes all that and turns it into a true stinker.
THE KITCHEN is based on a DC comic but the premise sounds rather like the top-notch 2018 neo-noir WIDOWS, which was inspired by a hit British TV show. Still, a good script could make that work.
If only THE KITCHEN had a good script, which it does not. Nor much sense at all. THE KITCHEN throws in every possible crime thriller cliche as well as bits and pieces from other films. The result is a big stinky mess, like a days-old pile of dirty dishes left in the sink.
Of course, this is not the first film to waste a talented cast on a lousy script but it seems particularly egregious in this case, with a fine cast lead by gifted women. Andrea Berloff’s direction helps little but the heroic efforts of the actors are sometimes surprisingly effective in individual scenes. Still, those moments are not enough to rescue this film from its dreadfully nonsensical script. This film could have been so good, but sadly it’s not even close.
Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), Ruby (Tiffany Haddish) and Claire (Elizabeth Moss) are the passive wives of some low-level criminals who get caught during robbery, and are sentenced to prison. While their husbands are locked up, the Irish-American crime gang that Ruby’s husband Kevin (James Badge Dale) heads is supposed provide financial support, but that turns out to be meager. Maybe that is due to the low opinion Ruby’s crime boss mother-in-law Helen (Margo Martindale) holds of the three wives.
It’s the 1970s, so these women all start out as timid housewives. Melissa McCarthy’s character Kathy is a classic stay-at-home mom, who seems happy to just be supportive of her beloved husband Jimmy (Brian d’Arcy James). Her character has the best marriage in the trio, with Ruby under the thumb of her mother-in-law, who resents her for being African American instead of Irish-American. Elizabeth Moss’ Claire who is abused by her violent husband Rob (Jeremy Bobb). The cast is rounded out by Domhnall Gleeson as Gabriel, a one-time hit-man for the gang with a romantic thing for Claire, and Common as one of a team of FBI agents keeping tabs on the gang.
Not surprisingly, when these downtrodden women find themselves in dire financial straits, they decide to rebel against their expected roles – remember this is the ’70s – and take up crime themselves. They decide to take control of the gang, or at least take over the protection racket from the men in the gang.
This proves surprisingly easy to do, so much so that the audience might wonder if the film is going to go in a lighter, more comedic direction. Until the killing starts. Weirdly, these women who start out so timid in speaking up to men or challenging their male authority seem not at all squeamish about killing off anyone standing in their way, not just fellow criminals but ordinary citizens.
After they dismember a body in a bathtub, there is no going back to a lighter tone, yet THE KITCHEN seems to want to do just that, as if these women were just partners in a bakeshop or other legit business. McCarthy’s character even cites the “good they have done for the community” in one unsettling scene, as if all the killing escaped her attention. Besides the disconnect in tone – violent crime thriller alternating with romance and female buddy picture – the film is packed with crime movie cliches, idiotic dialog, nonsensical plot twists and inconsistent characters. The film just keeps digging the hole deeper, until it buries itself in derivative muck.
It is a shame to waste this wonderful cast on this mess of a movie. If only the filmmakers had decided to add a real script, they might have had something, instead of wasting the audience’s time and money.
RATING: 1 out of 4 stars
