Itami uses his background in commercial art: every now and then, the characters assume shiny Pop poses, and the images have the slightly crazed look of heightened reality.

| Sep 13, 2023

What is it about food that brings out the best in filmmakers all across the globe?

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 10, 2022

Tampopo is a classic that shows that life, in all its diverse aspects, turns around food and the enjoyment it provides. A narrative that needs to be savoured!

| Aug 11, 2020

So you're watching all this amazing food being consumed, you're getting hungrier and hungrier and you're laughing harder and harder.

| May 18, 2020

Itami's film is indefatigably sweet-hearted and whatever your level of entertainment derived from this effervescent time capsule, you're bound to leave with a pleasant glow.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 22, 2019

A wild and uniquely Japanese culinary fantasia, but it's also not particularly cohesive.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 4, 2019

...one of the most gleefully unconventional, joyfully anarchic, and thoroughly original films of the 1980s.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 29, 2018

This is a movie that is brimming with passion for life, love, movies, and food.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 1, 2018

It's a weird one, but it's a blast.

| Aug 28, 2018

With its stylized irises and playfully exaggerated performances, Tampopo strikes the perfect balance between slapstick homage and tender throwback.

| Aug 22, 2018

With its foundation in familiar genres like the Western and the Hollywood sports movie, its rhythms will be recognizable to even the most subtitle-averse members of an audience. Tampopo is a movie with little to no cultural barrier.

| Oct 18, 2017

It is tempting to draw an immediate analogy between the film and ramen... Tampopo is constructed in a similar fashion, with fatty chunks of story and a tangle of narrative noodles, all enlivened by bright spots of spice.

| Jul 19, 2017

The film doesn't always work as a whole ... but its individual moments often come close to touching the sublime.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 11, 2017

The film was a labour of love for all involved and it shows in every detail.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 4, 2017

Moving from the erotic, the absurd, and the tragic, Itami's representations of food give us access to the most intimate areas of people's lives, reminding us of the unique place that food occupies in our humanity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 3, 2017

In Tampopo, every aspect of life is filtered through the prism of food - its rituals of preparation and consumption, its role as a social unifier or divider, its many healthy uses and perverse abuses.

| May 2, 2017

It's one of the greatest food movies of all time, taking time to appreciate the look and feel of the noodle soup.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 19, 2017

Tampopo is one of the great food films, its dizzy deliciousness pre-dating our addiction to the Food Network, celebrity chefs and exquisite plating.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 6, 2017

Tampopo is a thriving, celebratory and delightful classic that will leave you ravished by the end, for ramen, Asian cuisine or really, any form of sustenance.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 9, 2016

It unfolds as a series of madcap, effortlessly charming comic vignettes, centred around food and food culture in mid-'80s Japan.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 9, 2016