The Kitchen
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: August 9, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
35
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
24
Negative:
16
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 7, 2019
Speaking of female gangsters, no review of The Kitchen should overlook Margo Martindale, who steals every scene she’s in as a mob matriarch — a gravelly voiced monster with a gutter mouth and a big photo of John F. Kennedy on her wall. Martindale gets to be evil and has as much fun onscreen as she can without smiling. Read full review
67
ConsequenceBlake GobleAug 7, 2019
At its most basic, this is a conventional talkie, rooted in Warner Bros crime history, happy to play with cliché. At its most audacious, The Kitchen is a welcome flip on the generally male-dominated script. And at its most pleasing, this is a popcorn flick, with big moments, great pops, and three stars giving it their all, having one out in the street, making big moves for the people. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyAug 13, 2019
Its big idea, though vague, is at least a fascinating curiosity. But with its jumble of clichés, its blatant word-bubble declarations, and its hectically rushed impracticalities, the movie—which is based on a comic-book series—invites an air of antic exaggeration and revved-up stylization. It hints frustratingly, throughout, at a comedic impulse that the direction of its actors suppresses. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangAug 7, 2019
The gender politics are as appealing as the rock-solid trio of lead actors (Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss), even when the movie itself proves less than persuasive. Read full review
58
IndieWireKate ErblandAug 7, 2019
Despite 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. Read full review
55
IGNJim VejvodaAug 8, 2019
The Kitchen has a good cast and strong premise, but it never quite finds its footing and falls into gangster cliches. Read full review
50
Original-CinKaren GordonAug 15, 2019
There’s star power in front of and behind the camera in the new mob action-drama The Kitchen. But all that talent, unfortunately, doesn’t add up to a satisfying movie. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzAug 9, 2019
Full antihero equality will only be achieved when women are permitted to carry a crime drama by being so charismatic that viewers would consider following them into hell rather than give up the buzz they get from watching them be bad. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 8, 2019
The end result is something that feels like it should have been much better than it is. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeAug 7, 2019
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. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghAug 7, 2019
The Kitchen requires Scorsese levels of charisma to work, and only McCarthy comes close out of sheer professionalism. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJake ColeAug 7, 2019
The Kitchen’s inability to criticize its characters without falling back on mild endorsement for their warped empowerment cheapens the film’s moments of reflection, turning them into perfunctory scenes of mild protest. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 7, 2019
This material, though, is damn thin. Like so many films derived from the pictures and words of a graphic novel, The Kitchen feels perfunctory and sterile and under-detailed. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 7, 2019
We 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. Read full review
50
USA TodayBrian TruittAug 7, 2019
They’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. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenAug 7, 2019
What'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. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonAug 7, 2019
The Kitchen may prove to be a meaningful time-capsule document, but is far less successful as broad entertainment. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 7, 2019
It gets to the point where it hardly matters to us who lives and who dies, because they’re all stone-cold killers. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 7, 2019
As 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. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattAug 7, 2019
There’s so much talent in The Kitchen, and so much of it wasted; that’s kind of all you can think about for most of writer-director Andrea Berloff’s debut. Read full review
42
The PlaylistKimber MyersAug 7, 2019
Because 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. Read full review
40
EmpireJames WhiteSep 16, 2019
The Kitchen flits through scenes, coming across as its own trailer rather than a full movie. And it makes disappointing use of its great components, wasting three chewy, thoughtful core performances. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerAug 14, 2019
McCarthy and Haddish never seem to find that balance, leading to erratic performances that serve the moment rather than the scene. Read full review
40
CNNBrian LowryAug 8, 2019
A half-baked mob drama. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 7, 2019
When featherweight Domhnall Gleeson, as an intense angel of death, is your feminist Irish mob movie’s most interesting asset, you need to find Hollywood’s witness-protection program immediately. Read full review
40
TheWrapRobert AbeleAug 7, 2019
Women 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. Read full review
38
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckAug 13, 2019
Once the plot is set in motion, things begin to go haywire. Despite compelling work from the leads and excellent supporting work from character actors like Margo Martindale and Bill Camp, it all starts to feel choppy and forced and then just tonally off — way off. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerGary ThompsonAug 7, 2019
There is mismatch of tone and content throughout The Kitchen, which is never sure how to pair its lurid turns of plot with its intersectional feminist ambitions. Read full review
37
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 7, 2019
Although there are genuine moments of humor, they’re at odds with the increasingly ghastly measures taken by the three protagonists, as they succumb to power-hunger, paranoia and overkill. Read full review
30
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 9, 2019
Mostly, The Kitchen flounders, taking one page from Quentin Tarantino here and another from Martin Scorsese there, without ever finding its own sense of authorship. Even the movie’s soundtrack — featuring Etta James, Heart and Fleetwood Mac, among others — feels like a desperate attempt to set a mood that never quite jells. There’s not enough heat in this Kitchen, but there’s nothing cool about it, either. Read full review
30
Vanity FairRichard LawsonAug 7, 2019
It’s a mess of a movie, choppy and incoherent, a mishmash of tone that veers wildly from comedy to bloody drama, a gangster epic with no grounding in any people, place, or thing. Read full review
25
ObserverOliver JonesAug 9, 2019
The truth is, the film represents a troubling trend in films today, where production and marketing types think they can get by providing shallow examples of things that are popular in the social justice zeitgeist — women being tough-as-nails lead characters, for example — and act like that’s enough. It’s not. Give us real characters; give us good writing; give us a compelling story. Otherwise, don’t bother. Read full review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Sarah-Tai BlackAug 8, 2019
What The Kitchen serves is a first film sorely in need of a basic primer on how to go about constructing a movie. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 7, 2019
If you doubt that August is the boneyard for movies too poor to release in other months, here’s The Kitchen, an addled and actively unpleasant crime comedy-drama with a high-profile cast and a mean streak a mile wide. Based on a limited-edition comic book and completed in July 2018, the movie’s been sitting on the shelf until enough people are on vacation to not see it. Read full review
20
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 26, 2019
It’s quite an achievement to combine career low points for all three of the female leads, but a film that spends so much time capturing shots of characters walking sassily through the streets of 70s Hell’s Kitchen at the expense of characterisation clearly has its priorities fried. Read full review
20
The AtlanticDavid SimsAug 9, 2019
The Kitchen is an unsalvageable mess. Read full review
20
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 8, 2019
The Kitchen is deadly serious — and worse, deadly dull, even when it tries to act tough by laying on the violence and a heaping side of gore. Read full review
20
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 7, 2019
An offense against feminism, narrative logic and Fleetwood Mac, The Kitchen is a terrible, witless mess. Read full review
20
SlateInkoo KangAug 7, 2019
I felt resentful of my own feelings of gratitude while watching The Kitchen, a joyless and exhausting movie that squanders the talents of a dream trio: McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss. Read full review
20
The GuardianBenjamin LeeAug 7, 2019
The 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. Read full review
10
New York Magazine (Vulture)Angelica Jade BastienAug 14, 2019
The Kitchen is one of the most frustrating films in recent memory owing to how it squanders the mammoth potential baked into its dramatic genre — and its cast. Read full review
0
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiAug 8, 2019
This humorless, sadistically violent wreck has not a single satisfying second. It does, however, have more than 50 F-bombs. Read full review
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