The result is a movie as magical as it is mouth-watering.

| Oct 9, 2023

Laura Esquivel's wonderful novel about the powers of passion has been adapted for the screen by her husband, director Alfonso Arau. The result is as rich and savory as Mexican hot chocolate.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 11, 2023

The film's biggest setback is its script in which the density is felt next to its runtime. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Jun 11, 2020

An imaginative reconstruction of the traditional Mexican melodrama that is one of the year's best surprises. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 11, 2020

Set in Mexico at the turn of the 20th century, this epic of a forbidden love consummated only through food has a sizzling story, committed performances and sumptuous photography.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 11, 2020

It tells a dark, sad, horrific but heartening story in sweet, gleaming images that tickle ribs, quicken senses and awaken hungers. There's just one word for it: Scrumptious.

| Jun 11, 2020

Deliciously offbeat and bittersweet, it is, entirely appropriately, a treat.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 11, 2020

Like Water for Chocolate is a lushly photographed family saga about the enchantments of food and unrequited love.

| Oct 15, 2019

One of the best food films ever, changing its flavours as quickly the many moods of its heroine.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 31, 2018

Like Water For Chocolate is an extravagant, playful romantic fable that celebrates passion, liberation and the spirit of women but never forgets that unbridled ecstasy comes at a cost.

| Apr 10, 2018

A sensual pleasure, like reading a Marquez novel or eating a great, multicourse meal.

| Apr 10, 2018

The story is told through the lens of magic and tradition, of cultural values that are articulated through the senses, more specifically through food that feeds these senses.

| Jun 21, 2017

| Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2011

Passionate tale of lost and regained love.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 2, 2011

Indeed, this is one of the great food movies, and Arau lets his camera luxuriate over the various ingredients and finished delicacies.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 6, 2010

... becomes indigestible.

| Original Score: C | Jan 19, 2009

Strong material has been wasted by inept filmmaking in Like Water for Chocolate.

| Jul 25, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 12, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 2, 2008

The food scenes in this Mexican fable are just as sumptuous and appetizing as those in Denmark's Oscar-winning Babette's Feast, excpet they have an extra-erotic and surreal appeal due to masterful cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki and Steve Bernstein

| Original Score: A- | Feb 15, 2007