Critic Rating
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Director
Damien O'Donnell
Cast
Om Puri,
Linda Bassett,
Ian Aspinall,
Jimi Mistry,
Archie Panjabi,
Jordan Routledge
Genre
Comedy,
Drama
In 1971 Salford fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.
Dallas Observer
There is some meandering, episodic raggedness to the plotting, but Khan-Din's dialogue has a fine, naturalistic flow, and the young, debuting director O'Donnell, who's neither English nor Pakistani but Irish, skillfully keeps the material from showing too clearly its theatrical origins.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Get your titles straight -- this is the good one, and a roaring good time.
Dallas Observer by M. V. Moorhead
There is some meandering, episodic raggedness to the plotting, but Khan-Din's dialogue has a fine, naturalistic flow, and the young, debuting director O'Donnell, who's neither English nor Pakistani but Irish, skillfully keeps the material from showing too clearly its theatrical origins.
Time by Richard Schickel
The actor (Puri) and the film make something fine, winning and memorable.
Film.com by Peter Brunette
We've seen the clash of cultures and generations before,--- but never quite so humorously. This time, the focus is on the Pakistanis living in England, and it's quite amazingly done, perky and inventive to the core.
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
Examines Muslim family's religious warfare.
USA Today by Staff [Not Credited]
A robust family comedy that saves its wildest moments for a climactic "get-together."
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
East Is East is "The Full Monty" of 2000, a fresh, funny and poignant film filled with sparkling performances.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
He (Puri) is one of the most consistently excellent film actors that his country - or the world - has produced. And East is East, a grand cultural hybrid, is a real movie, too - raw, funny and wonderfully mixed up.
San Francisco Examiner by G. Allen Johnson
May be the funniest movie about parental and spousal abuse ever made.
Village Voice by Amy Taubin
Largely a showcase for Puri, and he rises to the occasion with a performance that bursts from the screen and tears into your heart.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
Bounces between funny and chilling.
Boston Globe by Jay Carr
This engaging ensemble comedy that could have been called ''Father Doesn't Know Best.''
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
Above all a man's confrontation with self in middle-age and his need to accept the fact that his children, beyond their mixed ancestry, are after all native-born English citizens.
Austin Chronicle
A pleasure to watch for the cast alone and their accomplishments should not be obscured by underwritten characters and overwritten jokey set-pieces.
Baltimore Sun by Chris Kaltenbach
Unwisely bills itself as a comedy.
Chicago Reader
Far less insulting to Pakistanis or Mancunians than it is to its audience.
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