So The Kitchen Was a Bit of a Let-Down

Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya’s directional debut is a nice stroll through class dystopia, and not much more

I don’t typically review things that have come out recently. Usually, it’s because I tend not to have the clearest, most fully formed view of something I’ve just watched, I often feel too strongly about it to sit down and write a full piece. This is why I tried and failed to write about Steve McQueen’s swirl love/heist story Widows and the recent BBC show Champion, two projects that I strongly disliked; it’s also why my piece about the 2023 rom-com Rye Lane (which you should watch) is a bit rambly and love-bomby.

The reason I’m telling you this is that I’m currently writing this review of The Kitchen — Kibwe Tavares, and Daniel Kaluuya’s dystopian directorial debut about the last council estate in a future version of London — about an hour after watching it. Not much processing needed, no particularly strong feelings evoked from watching this movie, it just was what it was.

So let’s get into it.

The Positives

Despite how ambivalent I feel towards the film itself, I’d say that the performances are probably the main thing stopping me from disliking it. The film centers around Isaac “Izi” James (played by everybody’s husband Kano) as he discovers that he has a son, Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman), and decides to kiiiind of care for him after the tree-ification (death) of Benji’s mother. The main characters of note are rounded out by Izi’s closest confidant Jese (Demmy Ladipo who has the greatest fortune of being slightly typecast in the “best friend who has his life figured out and just wants you to stop” role), Lord Kitchener (everybody’s uncle Ian Wright) who acts as the MC, announcer, and general glue that holds The Kitchen together, and Staples (Hope Ipoku Jr.) a young man who definitely does not have uni exams.

All of the performances are incredibly strong, with the actors making up for some pretty listless dialogue by delivering nuanced character moments that make the silences a lot more informative than any of the speaking.

Kano is predictably brilliant, it says a lot about his ability as an actor that my enjoyment of his subtle and intense performance managed to override my disappointment that he wasn’t given much more to do than essentially wheel up Sully’s relationship with Jason (R.I.P. lil bro, hope you’re watching Arsenal in heaven) in Top Boy. Bannerman & Ipoku Jr. give solid performances with Ipoku Jr. especially getting to stretch his acting legs a bit (although still underutilized) with a stoic but defiant performance. Ian Wright’s involvement is a pleasant surprise as an inclusion that could have easily felt a bit hammy and begg-ish works incredibly well.

As for other positives…

Umm…

Some of the scenes look nice, the ones in the nightclub are lit well.

Labrinth’s score is great, his haunting rendition of my least favourite church hymn really elevated the impact of the final scenes.

Some neat bike tricks.

Good to see Black people onscreen and behind the camera.

Yeah this is all I got, let’s move on.

Dismal Dystopia

I don’t hate the concept of this movie, I even think there was a lot of promise there. The idea of life inside the last remaining social housing is a powerful one, and there are ideas here that work like the residents banging pots to warn of police raids, and the general idea of The Kitchen itself as a setting, however where the film falls flat for me is in its execution.

The Kitchen just doesn’t seem particularly interested in the concept that it sells us, there’s no real insight into the world it’s set in, no real dissection of its quirks, and no time to explore what makes this world tick. Many of the “futuristic” features of the world that are shown to us feel a bit arbitrary, if not for small aesthetic details like Isaac having a touchscreen mirror (seems annoying af), the odd AI voiceovers, and a few cold colour palettes, you wouldn’t be able to tell that this is a dystopian future at all. It’s odd, there’s something slightly detached about the approach to this story, the execution of it seems to lack passion, focus, and a level of curiosity needed to draw out the full potential of this world.

What Exactly Happened?

Coming away from The Kitchen was a bit weird.

After an hour and a half spent watching this film, I came away from it struggling to remember exactly what happened in it.

Besides the ending, there just isn’t much of a memorable story being told here, more of a collection of different scenes that don’t particularly go anywhere interesting. If I had to explain how this film goes down to people, it would simply be meandering scenes broken up by increasingly violent police raids, that’s pretty much it.

Overall the story just feels disjointed, aimless, and without narrative purpose; which is very disappointing because so many of the individual story arcs seemed like they had real promise.

For me, the storyline with the most potential belonged to Staples. Ipoku Jr’s performance carried a level of depth that made it seem like there was a lot more under the surface of this character, his beliefs, his relationship with his crew, his morality, and his methods. At first I (optimistically) thought that Staples’ chosen style of civil unrest would butt heads with Isaac’s desire to keep his head down, with the former forcing the latter to question how much he was actually doing to make lasting change and secure the future of his son. It’s also through Staples that we perhaps could’ve gotten a better understanding of how this particular dystopian world stands out, some semblance of those in power, and some other story beats that may have fleshed the world out a little bit.

A Story of Black Fatherhood?

Perhaps the most tiring aspect of this film for me was that it leaned into a trope that I’m increasingly becoming bored of.

Don’t get me wrong, the “reluctant father eventually learns to love his new son” trope has the potential to evoke something from me (probably not great that the most recent positive example of this trope that I can conjure up is The Mandalorian), but it’s often when watching projects like The Kitchen where my frustrations with this narrative direction often rise to the forefront.

Quite frankly, Benji and Isaac’s bond elicits almost zero emotion from me, and any moments where I actually found myself caring about the two of them together mainly stemmed from the strong performance of the actors.

Earlier, I compared this particular part of the story to Sully’s relationship with Jason in Top Boy, and it’s from thinking about the differences between the two that I can pinpoint my issues with this use of the trope. My main issue is just the arbitrary nature of it, the fact that Isaac isn’t compelled to care for Benji through any deep character motivation, instead his compulsion to care for the younger basically begins and ends at “well I just found out he’s my son sooo…”. Compare that to Sully and Jason’s dynamic where Sully becomes Jason’s reluctant informal guardian but there are very clear deeper reasons why Sully feels so protective of him and what the death of the latter means for the former (also the found family trope is just better).

My ultimate issue with Benji and Isaac’s relationship — and my issue with the trope as a whole — is that the moments of tough love and friction between the two just feel arbitrary. Every time Isaac catches himself treating his own son nicely and then reverts to hermit mode, it just feels like we’re wasting time and stalling the inevitable. I’d much rather see this time spent watching Isaac earnestly trying (and often failing) to navigate being a loving father in this dystopian society.

The Ending

Ultimately, a lot of my issues with The Kitchen can be summed up by the ending which feels kinda… meh. The ending sees Lord Kitchener murdered by the police (yay Black traumaaa) and the people of The Kitchen rising up to trap the law enforcement and… throw sh*t at them? While Staples just kinda watches? Isaac comes back to The Kitchen to be with Benji after abandoning him to go to a nice new flat with a nice view of whatever is on the green screen and finally accepts his role as Benji’s father before the police break down their door and we cut to black.

The resolution of this movie shares the same problem with its dialogue, its world-building, and its character work: it all just feels a bit unfinished. Isaac coming back for Benji doesn’t hit as much because not much focus was put on him leaving in the first place; the (on the nose) death of Lord Kitchener feels sad mostly because I don’t like to see Uncle Ian hurt, but it doesn’t have much impact for me because it feels a bit random, there’s not twist in the narrative or falling domino that makes this raid feel any more tense than the last, so when he’s killed it the moment itself doesn’t have the weight that it should. I would argue that Lord Kitchener’s funeral is probably the strongest and maybe only truly memorable scene of the film, and that’s mostly down to Kano’s phenomenal non-verbal acting when he sees who the next tree is about to be (dead people are tress or something, it’s dystopian), and Labrinth’s musical talents rather than any sense of narrative pay-off.

Honestly, The Kitchen isn’t a bad movie, it absolutely had the ingredients to be something great — the performers, Labrinth, the concept — but I just came away with it feeling like somewhere along the creative process, someone behind the scenes ran out of steam. It’s full of great ideas and performances that just don’t seem to have the creative dynamism to really make it a piece of memorable dystopia, and that’s a real shame.