35
Metascore
42 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 58IndieWireKate ErblandIndieWireKate ErblandDespite some major narrative missteps, the film’s bold twist on the mob drama still has a refreshing quality. Maybe The Kitchen would have fared better as a series, with more time for its potential material to simmer.
- 50Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreAs the picture sputters and stalls, losing its quick pace and brutal efficiency in the later acts, this comic book adaptation reveals the flaws in its execution, if not its very origins.
- 50Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperChicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperIt gets to the point where it hardly matters to us who lives and who dies, because they’re all stone-cold killers.
- 50Screen DailyTim GriersonScreen DailyTim GriersonThe Kitchen may prove to be a meaningful time-capsule document, but is far less successful as broad entertainment.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenThe Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenWhat's missing in this Kitchen is heat. A B-movie summer diversion at best, it's more a collection of genre tropes than an involving crime drama.
- 50USA TodayBrian TruittUSA TodayBrian TruittThey’re made women in an underworld that doesn’t want them, and while that theme is sufficiently explored, The Kitchen disappointingly fails to explore the racial politics it hints at and, aside from the main trio, is full of characters who feel paper thin. The results aren’t criminal, per se, but the movie more often finds mediocrity instead of real nuance.
- 50VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanWe see, in Melissa McCarthy’s increasingly fierce performance, a hint of what the movie might have been: the tale of a new kind of feminine mystique — a methodical fury that weds the imperatives of a mother to the style of a gangster. But that movie needed a better script.
- 42The PlaylistKimber MyersThe PlaylistKimber MyersBecause we’re living in the worst timeline, these actors and concept are wasted in a movie that lacks spark, flavor, spice, and generally anything that generates or even resembles substantive heat.
- 40TheWrapRobert AbeleTheWrapRobert AbeleWomen have been long overdue their “Goodfellas” or “Scarface,” but the not-too-hot The Kitchen is more superficial comic-book posturing than enjoyable blast of exploitation equality.
- 20The GuardianBenjamin LeeThe GuardianBenjamin LeeThe Kitchen, a late summer, female-led adaptation of a little-known DC comic, is the worst kind of bad movie. That’s because it has all the ingredients of a good movie, from a juicy premise to a stellar cast, yet it’s assembled with such staggering incompetency that from the very first scene it boils over into one star territory, all promise evaporating from the screen. The boredom and confusion that then follows is backgrounded by an almost angry frustration that someone could get something so potentially thrilling so very, very wrong.