75
Ramen Shop has its charms, but it’s a bit too lightweight to leave a lasting impact.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Ihara and Aw’s love story feels real and plays well as represented through fine cuisine.
78
Paste Magazine by Andrew Crump
Like the best “food porn” movies, Ramen Shop is an expression of authentic passion, the kind fostered by abiding connections not simply to food but to the people, places and times food recalls.
50
Washington Post by Ann Hornaday
For all of its foodie appeal, however, Ramen Shop is a wispily sentimental enterprise, full of perfunctory transitions, maudlin plot twists and awkward time shifts between past and present.
60
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
A drama from the Singaporean director Eric Khoo that also demonstrates the power of Instagrammable cuisine to spice up an otherwise straightforward, sentimental film.
60
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
It is saved by its underlying theme of forgiveness and reconciliation between long-estranged family members, for whom the cruel memory of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Singapore during World War 2 is still alive.
67
If you can tolerate a little saccharine piano music and ethereal backlighting with your food porn, Ramen Shop is an appetizing little bite of multicultural foodie edutainment.
60
Bringing two of Singapore and Japan’s most popular dishes (bak kut teh and ramen) together in a film about cultural and culinary fusion, Singaporean auteur Eric Khoo’s “Ramen Teh” is cinematically more comfort food than haute cuisine.
75
RogerEbert.com by Monica Castillo
Ramen Shop believes that the healing power of food can satisfy our hunger for comfort in difficult times, and that should be filling enough for now.
50
Slant Magazine by Peter Goldberg
Its drawn-out descriptions of culinary traditions and practices are enticing enough, but the same can’t be said about the characterizations.