It’s a nuanced tale of interracial love that tackles colorism, how prejudice functions within a local economy, and the generational pain of cultural displacement.

Full Review | Feb 29, 2024

Denzel Washington is the dramatic and romantic center.

Full Review | Dec 26, 2023

The movie’s not just hot, it’s humid.

Full Review | Jul 22, 2022

The result, surely buttressed by the film’s new restoration, is a persistent sense of atmosphere -- but one whose source, meanings, and embedded sentiments seem at times impossible to pin down.

Full Review | Jun 23, 2022

Mira Nair’s sophomore feature, Mississippi Masala, lives at the intersection of disparate cultures.

Full Review | May 19, 2022

The kind of movie that is not particularly good yet somehow better than “good.” It is memorable. Not least amongst its qualities is Washington’s performance.

Full Review | May 9, 2022

Mississippi Masala appears to have been produced on a modest (by Hollywood standards) budget, but it is a big movie in terms of talent, geography and concerns.

Full Review | Apr 15, 2022

The script, though it clips along with a wicked capering wit, is forever explaining itself; the comedy is a broad grin filled with sitcom retreads... Delivered with enormous good humor and affection, all of this works.

Full Review | Apr 15, 2022

While some of the subplots meander, Nair does a good job at sustaining the key ones. The film, though, ultimately rises less on its screenplay than on the strength of the powerful presence of Washington and the sensual Choudhury.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 15, 2022

A two-hour film with the density and humanity of a Dickens novel, a wide cast of believable and lovable characters, a tone that varies from farce to lust to love to hate, all built from the dreams and memories and aspirations of people.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 15, 2022

It moves in fits and starts and it isn't obsessively tidy about each and every loose end, but in its sweet, slightly melancholy, gently humorous way, it fills the screen with the freshest, most winning love story we've seen in ages.

Full Review | Apr 15, 2022

Sooni Taraporevala's script never loses its sense of humor. She and director Mira Nair, who collaborated on Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay, understand the exile's life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 15, 2022

Though Mississippi Masala is, by a conservative estimate, the 4,000th film to appropriate Romeo and Juliet as a metaphor for racial intolerance, Nair's film feels amazingly fresh and lively.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 15, 2022

Like Choudhury, Mississippi Masala seems utterly fresh and charming. But it is also profoundly interesting.

Full Review | Apr 15, 2022

Mississippi Masala is too ambitious for its own good, but it takes you to parts of the world -- and parts of the American scene -- that have waited too long for a place on the wide screen.

Full Review | Apr 15, 2022

Mississippi Masala is thoughtful, funny and -- considering its budget of $5.5 million, about a quarter of the typical Hollywood release -- strikingly well done.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 15, 2022

If the film suffers from a lack of passion, in retrospect one marvels at the many variations with which Nair explores her themes of prejudice and racial solidarity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 15, 2022

Washington is commanding as ever onscreen; Choudhury, on the other hand, fails to convey the complexities of her culturally divided and pivotal character. Still, Nair has created an unusual movie of extreme political and cultural significance.

Full Review | Apr 15, 2022

Despite the awkwardness of much of the staging, and the unevenness of the script, the movie does give you a sense of real people living real lives.

Full Review | Apr 15, 2022

What makes this such a filling and memorable masala is that [director Mira Nair] stirs in so many misunderstandings with so little malice.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 15, 2022