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
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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