80
Like all good films, it raises these types of questions, answering some, and leaving some for you to answer yourself.
We hate to say it, but we can't find anywhere to view this film.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Hamer, a meticulous observer himself, is a minimalist with heart.
70
The film appears consistently poised to go deeper but instead hangs back, making it less substantial than it might have been. Yet the sweet-natured story's gentle humor and poignancy should draw appreciative audiences.
60
Slight but sardonic, Norwegian director Bent Hamer's deadpan Kitchen Stories makes a taciturn comedy of nothingness out of color-coordinated '50s coziness and Scandinavian social planning.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
In the wonderfully droll Kitchen Stories, Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer takes an already inspired premise and weaves it into a spry absurdist comedy that also manages to find some considerable warmth.
70
Seems too subtle at times and too obvious at others, but Hamer strings together pieces of conversation and layers of voyeurism (everybody in the movie is watching somebody) into a moving study of the perils of presumption.
67
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The icy whimsy of Kitchen Stories is certainly well sustained, but you don't laugh at the movie so much as wait for the joke to thaw.
80
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
The film is saying that, left to their own devices, all men would devolve into a morass of monastic grouches. Kitchen Stories is a prime piece of comic anthropology.
70
What a pleasure it is not to be hectored by a director as we laugh our own little laughs, watching a profound story unfold.
80
In the landscape of contemporary movie comedies, Kitchen Stories is like a rejuvenating blast of crisp Nordic air.