Tampopo 1985

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: It's a funny story beautifully told. Read more

Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times: Japanese films have commented before on the intrinsic connection between food and sex, but not with the erotic gusto of Juzo Itami's Tampopo and rarely with the comic lustiness of this broad-scale satire. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: The movie makes you laugh, gets you hungry, stirs things up. Read more

Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer: Tampopo is, among many other things, the first "spaghetti eastern" and one of its particular charms is that it celebrates as much as satirizes. No movie gourmet with exotic tastes should miss it. Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: Tampopo is buoyantly free in form. It's as much an essay as it is a narrative -- always ready to digress into random gags and comic anecdotes. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Itami's humor and invention is such that we never have a chance to feel deprived. His stylistic palette and sense of fun are so wide-ranging that he can oscillate between brightness and darkness to articulate one gag. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Tampopo is one of those utterly original movies that seems to exist in no known category. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: It is often very amusing, although the ragged, free-wheeling structure tends to blunt Itami's somewhat obvious thesis, that eating is more closely connected to sex than we would normally admit. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: A thoroughly offbeat but most enjoyable comedy on the subject of food. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: It's half movie, half dessert-topping -- a film gourmand's lusty dream. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Director Itami has produced an engaging cinematic hybrid, brilliantly stir-frying Japanese food -- and other -- obsessions into cowboy themes. Read more