What's Cooking?

As many of us will know from this last festive season, having the whole family together is not always all it's cracked up to be. More often that not these 'reunions' manage to bring out the worst in people.

What's Cooking? is a snapshot of what Thanksgiving in America means to different families from different cultures, whats clear is that dysfunction spans the cultural divide.

We are introduced to the Jewish family with the lesbian daughter and her lover, the Hispanic family with the philandering husband and newly liberated wife, the cross-generational Vietnamese family's struggle with old traditions vs. new realities, and the successful yet fractured African American family. Happy holidays!

Food is used to highlight the differences between these families, hence the title What's Cooking?, so whilst Turkey is served at each of the households the accompanying dishes vary from polenta to fajitas to macaroni cheese!

What is really impressive about this film though, is that each of the individual tales could be a full length movie yet Gurminder Chadha interweaves them cleverly into 106 minutes without losing anything by way of quality or entertainment. This is also helped by a huge but very talented cast, each with a fantastic and well developed role to play.

As the old cliché goes: I laughed and I cried, this film has everything - and for a relatively unknown piece I was very impressed..

Sophie Robinson