Really Surprised!

Purely Joyful Movie!

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I'm going to step away from what everyone else has been talking about. I feel like you have no chance of winning if you don't meet their standard. It could be your style of cooking but it can also be the way you look or your race. I don't want to sound like a lot of these people don't deserve the win but you have no chance of winning if you're not white and you have no chance of winning if you're white and look ghetto. The show is meant for the classy white fans.

Reading the IMDb reviews prompted me to write one. Unlike some reviewers, I truly love the show's concept of four ridiculous ingredients and having to whip up an appetizer, entree and dessert within so-many minutes. Obviously, many other viewers do as well which is why the show is still on the air. Ted Allen is the perfect host.I wholeheartedly agree that the judges can be irritating. *SPOILER ALERT* In the episode "Offal Surprise", Marc Murphy reprimands (!) Aaron Dubois, a chef with a great personality, for taking a sip of alcohol while he was making his dish. Dubois counters, "I was just having fun!" Dubois is then reprimanded for having fun in the competition. I kid you not! *SPOILER ALERT* In the episode "Viewers' Choice Baskets", Scott Conant, after tasting Tre Goshall's dish, states "that is the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth." Goshall counters, "I think that is an exaggeration." Indeed! There you have two examples of the sizes of Murphy's and Conant's egos. My least favorite judge is Maneet Chauhan. If I had a dollar for every time she states, "too sweet"! My hope is that Maneet goes on a permanent vacation from Chopped. Alex Guarnaschelli seems moody; in some episodes, she is completely fair and in others, Alex appears to be very nasty.I agree with the IMDb reviewers that the judges' decision on who wins each round seems fixed. *SPOILER ALERT* For example, I thought for sure that Dubois would win the "Offal Surprise" episode but as soon as he expressed that he was "having fun", Dubois' fate was inevitable.If Chopped would do away with the "panel of judges" concept and stick to three fair judges, particularly Aaron Sanchez, Marcus Samuelson & Amanda Freitag, viewers would be happy.They criticize without slinging insults and praise with warmth and friendliness. However, I know the panel of judges format is here to stay and that the judges have very busy lives in reality, being unable to donate their time to every Chopped episode.

Chopped is not exactly the most prominent Reality TV competition. American Idol is having its final season next year, Survivor has been here since 2000 and is going to be at 32 seasons by this time next year, and I have watched Big Brother from the US and Canada editions (not to mention that Canada watches US Big Brother and vice versa). However, Chopped is a different kind of game.On Chopped, you are given 4 ingredients for each meal from a basket and you have to make a dish out of whatever ingredients you pull out of the box, however bizarre they are, in a given amount of time (any other ingredient and machine in the kitchen can also be used). Seems simple enough, right? Well... not really. The show has 3 judges who will eat anything off the plates, critique the dishes, and decide who goes home out of a starting roster of 4 people. The insanity that goes on in the kitchen makes for a scramble that will put avid food fans at the edge of their seats. Really, it's the scrambling to make their dishes that shines in this show because not only does it make it fun, it crowns deserving winners upon deserving winners. I have even seen 1 winner of the show appear again as a judge, so if one of the judges wanted to be in the kitchen, don't count them out.The judges critiques/comments I am mixed on. What judges make notes on while the contestants cook I do find to be positive feedback and helps us, the audience, learn about the ingredients that come out of the basket. But when giving criticism about the dishes, it can sometimes get pretty stupid real quick. Describing desserts too sweet and saying that grilled cheese cannot be a dessert are 2 examples of that and some of the eliminations are, in all honesty, kind of bogus as a result. But a lot of other criticisms are very fair and so unfair eliminations are not too much of a problem. I like Scott Conant, Chris Santos, and Amanda whatsherface especially as judges.My other big problem is that the host is way too easy to make fun of during the cooking portions of the episodes and so it makes the show more laughable at times when it really doesn't need to be as so. However, it doesn't destroy the show entirely as he does a professional job with the eliminations and introductions.All in all, Chopped is a fine choice for people who want to find something different on TV. However, it really needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

I really enjoy watching the contestant chefs prepare elegant gourmet dishes from surprise unusual ingredients. For a while, that worked for me. But the more I watched, the more disgusted I became by the judges.Of course, we, the audience, don't see everything that happened, only what the directors splice together for broadcast. And we can't taste the food. We can only hear the comments of the judges and the contestants. And we can only see the scenes cut from the various cameras, scenes provided obviously out of their natural sequence and spliced together to provide a feel for the competition rather than a raw presentation of it.That is what the audience has and it is all the audience can use to judge the program. If the directors have omitted important information that would change our opinion, too bad.The show's host gives the rules at the beginning of the show. Each dish will be judged on presentation, taste, and creativity. But creativity rarely gets the judges' thumbs up. The contest begins with each of four chefs preparing an appetizer. The chef with the "worst" appetizer is chopped and each of the three remaining chefs prepares an entrée. The chef with the "worst" entrée is chopped and each of the two remaining chefs prepares a dessert. The winner is chosen based on all three courses.Given that scenario, a chef who is second worst in both the first and the second rounds should have a nearly impossible task of winning. However, it happens more often than we would expect. The judges' critiques of the first two courses are shown again along with their critiques of the final course, but the judges' interpretation inexplicably changes so that one final contestant, who earlier was deemed by them to be far inferior to the other final contestant, in the final analysis becomes a close competitor and even wins.Worse for me is that chefs whose dishes appear to be quite beautiful and are given only mild negative comments by the judges, are chopped over chefs whose dishes appear to be quite unappealing and are given far more severe negative comments by the judges. In too many cases, judges have chopped chefs, not for any objective flaw, but because of the judges inappropriate subjective criteria, e.g., the absolute quantity (i.e., not the relative quantity of how much of one thing versus another thing was on a plate, but how much in total was on a plate, e.g., one clam was not enough for an appetizer, a sandwich was too much), the sweetness of a dessert (one judge likes things very sweet, another judge doesn't), the sweetness of an appetizer (one judge doesn't like sweet appetizers), the degree to which something should be cooked (some judges prefer rare, some prefer medium, none like well done).Recall the criteria: presentation; taste; and creativity. Portion size is not among the criteria, unless we stretch presentation to cover this, and that would be quite a stretch. Taste, I think, means that it should taste good, that the flavors of the required ingredients shine clearly and are well balanced. Again, it would be a stretch to include in the taste criteria whether an appetizer should or shouldn't be sweet. Of course, any dish, even a dessert, may be too sweet. And that would be factor in taste, along with too bland, too salty, too sour, too bitter. But too sweet is not at all the same as sweet or not sweet. And the degree of doneness (rare, medium, well) clearly does not fit under any of the criteria.There are things that must be cooked to a minimum degree (e.g., chicken and pig). And anything can be overcooked. No, these don't fall under presentation, taste, or creativity. Nor does chef's blood, but getting your blood in the food is also a no-no. As is double-dipping, i.e., tasting the food from a utensil and putting the utensil back into the food. Indeed, sanitary conditions aren't among the criteria. But these are universal rules and properly implied. Things like rare, medium, well are personal preferences and not properly implied.To be fair, if the judges have a standard by which dishes are to be judged, they should inform the contestants beforehand. But they don't. After a while, the show became, for me, an exercise in watching mediocrity win $10,000. I am not entertained by watching mediocre chefs play it safe with their cooking. I see nothing interesting. I learn nothing interesting. For those reasons, I had to chop this program from my schedule.