The point of The Hundred-Foot Journey is to give the viewer a tasting menu that covers everything from heartwarming home cooking to molecular gastronomy (which according to this film is just strange-looking, soulless food rather than the crazy, magical experience that the cuisine actually offers when it’s done expertly). However, without Mirren and Puri to keep things fresh, The Hundred-Foot Journey ends up feeling like a banquet made of leftovers that’s going on for entirely too long.

The movie works best when it forays bravely into the tornado, conjuring up suitably awe-inspiring acts of devastation, and is at its most tedious when it tries to establish emotional connections with its characters, including Richard Amritage’s suspiciously buff school vice-principal and Sarah Wayne Callies’s anxious single mother and weather scientist.

Nature’s fury dished out for the sake of satiating guilty pleasures