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The Chef of South Polar

2009 2h 5m Comedy List
Reviews 71% Audience Score 50+ Ratings A cook provides hearty meals for men at an Antarctic research station. Read More Read Less

Critics Reviews

View All (1) Critics Reviews
Chase Burns The Stranger (Seattle, WA) Its rich food-making scenes totally enamored me. Lobster, ramen, foie gras, onigiri—everything centers around food preparation. Feb 10, 2022 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (11) audience reviews
dustin d The Chef of South Park is a lively tale about the harsh life in an outpost in Antarctica and the harsher challenge of living in close quarters with a group of dudes. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Beautiful and heartwarming. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member another film only man can understand. Comfy as fuck. Remind me of the good old days i had with my college bros. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member This marked the first of several films that I have watched during the Japanese Film Festival held in the GSC Cinemas (Msia) in Sept 2013. It contained an interesting concept - basically pertaining to survival skills employed by modern day professionals under extreme working conditions. It is something everyone can relate to at some point in our professional or student life. Postings to places far from our home, or working 24/7 for a demanding project. Effects conjured out as a result of leaving our comfort zones, like homesickness, feeling out of touch with family members' or loved ones whereabouts, urban lifestyle etc...but in this case, the saving grace is that the 'trapped' scientists had the luxury of a chef to provide the best of the most important necessities of all, which is home made food. It is rather amazing how sophisticated dishes can be made under lack of variety of food choices, and the low water boiling point. But another sweet side of the movie is that it quite diversely covered the fun activities that are likely to happen to fill in the boredom. There were the unpleasant side of the activities too, for instance during long distance phone calls which were better not made in the first place, or one particular favourite scene where a member threw tantrum as a particular food supply ran out. The only couple of things I can name that the movie did not cover at all were the doctor's chores, it was like none of the members had any health problems throughout the over 400-day stint.some of the characters were severely underdeveloped, I didn't get to know their background or why they chose to participate in the expedition at all. Overall this is easily a heartwarming movie but given its time length I felt more allocation to character development could be done to substitute for some of the food scenes. A 6.5/10 movie to me. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/21/23 Full Review Audience Member [2013-8-30] Beef noodles I will choose Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Audience Member Could be less lengthy and more brief. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/10/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Chef of South Polar

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis A cook provides hearty meals for men at an Antarctic research station.
Director
Shûichi Okita
Producer
Toshikazu Nishigaya
Screenwriter
Shûichi Okita
Production Co
Bandai Visual Co. Ltd.
Genre
Comedy
Original Language
Japanese
Runtime
2h 5m