The Hundred Foot Journey *Helen Mirren, Om Puri,

Just to clarify, I was mistaken about Charlotte Le Bon's character-she works for Helen Mirren's character but is not her daughter. She is Manish Dayal's love interest, and Om Puri is kind of Helen Mirren's.

This is a very good-natured, unpretentious and idealistic film. I was expecting a lot more preachiness than I got, which was nice: the film did a good job of putting across its message about tolerance and cross-cultural exchange without being sanctimonious or obnoxious about it, or pretending that the French are somehow more prejudiced than anyone else.

It deployed some very Indian film tropes in unusual ways: we get mother-love for the briefly seen, then deceased Juhi Chawla character, and also for Mirren as her character evolves into kind of a surrogate mother to the young man. We get the young hero making his name in the big city and (almost) losing his way to the seductions of molecular cuisine (bwahahaha) before reconnecting with his core values (which lead him back to a small town in France, not to a small town in India).

The cinematographer is a genius, the scenery is pretty (although enhanced with some too-obvious cgi), the food is prettier, and the performances are good. Om Puri is doing his standard grumpy old man schtick-except for the use of English and the lack of neon-turbaned Akki characters running around, he might just as well be in Singh is Kinng-but he has some funny lines and does well. Amit Shah is pretty good as the befuddled eldest brother. Manish Dayal kind of looks like a deer caught in the headlights at times but overall he is fine. Charlotte Le Bon kind of reminds me of Katrina Kaif in Zindagi Na Milega Dobara, or the brief moments in some of her other films (thinking of Mere Brother ki Dulhan and the ending of Blue, here) where Kat's kind of talking down to a male character. Le Bon's bitten-off words, amused but slightly patronizing tone, cute but superior smile, and rapidly blinking while she tries to think of a kinder way of saying what she needs to in order to enlighten the young man standing before her are all very Katrina. I found her amusing and likable, but was slightly weirded out by the Katrina isms, as you can tell.

Helen Mirren is magnificent. You never doubt for a moment that she is French, that she knows how to cook and her character's realization that she doesn't want to throw in her lot with the wannabe fascist types who are persecuting the Indian family is very well done.  Juhi Chawla has virtually no screen time but does well with what she is given.

The main quibble I had was that if you know anything about France, some of the attempts to seem timeless are a bit odd-the film explicitly states that the hero was born in 1990, and the main events pretty much have to be taking place no earlier than 2007, but the cars, the women's clothes and the slogan the bad guys spray paint on the Indian restaurant's fence are all artifacts of the 1960s. AR Rahman's music is fairly unmemorable.  It is true that there's not a lot of drama or setback once Mirren's character comes around, but I'm not sure that it's a bad thing, any more than it is in, say, Kandukondain.