- 8
...tells a story we think we already know, but we're wrong: It has new things to say within an old formula.
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 7
Understated and affecting.
—Jason Lynch People
- 6
...feels something like the Kramer Vs. Kramer of Indian domestic issues -- it addresses sexual and social freedom rather than divorce and single parenting, but with the same feeling of slowly fumbling through the radical ideas that women are more than humble household servants, and men are more than simple stereotypes.
—Tasha Robinson Onion AV Club
- 5
...too condensed.
—Sid Smith Chicago Tribune
- 5
Airless, earnest and sludgy with banalities...
—Kyle Smith New York Post
- 5
...Gavron had no choice but to prune Ali's huge cast of Dickensian supporting characters; in the process, she's also replaced the novel's teeming vitality and tragicomic drive with a prettified lyricism that drags the story down.
—Ella Taylor Village Voice
- 5
...Gavron had no choice but to prune Ali's huge cast of Dickensian supporting characters; in the process, she's also replaced the novel's teeming vitality and tragicomic drive with a prettified lyricism that drags the story down.
—Ella Taylor LA Weekly
- 5
...lurching...
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 3
...Gavron, whose outsider relationship to the titular East London curry strip couldn't be any more obvious or painful, has designed the film with the same book-of-the-month-club demographic Deepa Mehta appeals to in mind, but Mehta's filmic instincts are at least sensual, whereas Gavron's are just tawdry and effusive.
—Ed Gonzalez Slant Magazine