You'll be disappointed if you expect to find much insight or genuine human emotion in this ultra-thin movie, which is really four stories artificially connected. What you'll get is a parade of stereotypical diversity images -- your basic gay (lesbian) couple, your basic Jewish parents,your basic Hispanic family,your basic Asian family and your mandatory Black family. Each family group is made to appear to be struggling with some fundamental culturally-driven (often racially-connected) family crisis, but there are no real crisis issues and not much happens. Nobody really changes. The superficiality of this inoffensive and generally pleasant little movie obviously relates to the fact that the writer/director is not a US native, so we get the flawed and incomplete perceptions of a foreigner who doesn't know enough about any particular cultural strain within US society to deliver one compelling and insightful story. Instead she gives us four short sketches that teach us nothing and go nowhere. ("Can't we all just get along?")
Review of What's Cooking?
