The reviews lean clearly warm. Most critics take to Ang Lee’s film as a confident, funny and compassionate family comedy, and the praise clusters in two places: the food, which several reviewers call the most memorable thing on screen, and the ensemble, whose performances are described as light, believable and textured. Lee’s touch is repeatedly noted as deft rather than heavy, and the dialogue as witty and warm. Radio Times goes further, rating it above Lee’s other films and tracing its stately style to Yasujiro Ozu and Woody Allen.
The spread is narrow. No critic turns against the film, and the two notices that pull the average down are ones whose full text is not available, so their verdicts cannot be read in detail. Among the readable reviews the reservations are faint: the structure is complex and the pace unhurried, which not every viewer will take to. The Skinny, writing two decades on, finds the family portrait as emotionally authentic as the first critics did.