A Place at the TableMovie Reviews

A Place at the Table Showtimes + Tickets

Avg. Critic Score: 68 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore^® based on all critic reviews

Information for Parents:

OK for kids 9+

Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

100

New York Daily News | Joe Neumaier
As important and eye-opening a documentary as you’ll see this year, A Place at the Table makes it impossible to think of hunger as merely another symptom of a shredded social safety net. Read full review
75

Movie Nation | Roger Moore
It’s a beautifully shot and reasonably balanced film, but one that struggles to find a hopeful note to end on. Read full review
75

San Francisco Chronicle | Walter Addiego
The film bolsters its case with plenty of facts, charts and expert testimony - evidence typical of this sort of advocacy documentary. But what makes the movie compelling is its focus on a handful of victims, who make the statistics painfully real. Read full review
75

Slant Magazine |
More difficult to convey are the web of moral and political issues that surround the hunger crisis, and A Place at the Table proves its worth most by how it treats this wider set of problems. Read full review
75

Chicago Sun-Times |
A good documentary that is good for you. The bad news is that broccoli and bananas are neither available nor affordable for many Americans. That's the message of Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush's A Place at the Table, a necessary report on the national issue of hunger. Read full review
75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) | Rick Groen
Says the actor Jeff Bridges, a long-time and articulate soldier in the campaign against hunger: “It’s a problem that our government is ashamed of acknowledging. We’re in denial.” Read full review
70

Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern
In addition to the dismaying facts and figures is a fuller sense of what hunger can look like, and feel like, among the millions of Americans classified as "food-insecure" — those who may not know, for themselves or their children, where the next meal will come from. Read full review
67

Austin Chronicle | Marjorie Baumgarten
Few are willing to publicly confess their hunger or undernourishment or place it on display. And the problem is kept hidden as long as charitable food banks and soup kitchens continue to disguise the depth of the hunger. A Place at the Table confronts the issue head-on and offers some solutions. Read full review
40

Time Out New York |
As an info dump, Table is admirably efficient, addressing everything from obesity to the limits of charity. As a film, it’s less compelling, with only one subject — Philadelphia single mom Barbie Izquierdo — getting enough screen time to put a human face on the crisis. Read full review
38

Boston Globe | Mark Feeney
As morally engaged as the movie is, it’s also argumentatively slack. Precisely because it’s so easy to agree that hunger is bad, it’s hard to agree what to do. Read full review

Metacritic link View more reviews for A Place at the Table on Metacritic

Information for Parents

Common Sense Media says OK for kids 9+ Powerful docu explores the problem of hunger in America.

What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that the documentary A Place at the Table addresses difficult and mature issues revolving around hunger in the United States. By visiting different "food desert" communities -- the urban streets of Philadelphia, a rural town in Colorado, a backroads hamlet in Mississippi -- and interviewing not just experts but also the families who live on extremely limited incomes or access to food, the filmmakers capture the pervasive problem of food insecurity. There's no violence, swearing, drinking, or sex, but very young children won't understand the discussion -- and kids who are sensitive to others' misfortune may find the subject matter worrying/upsetting. The movie argues that hunger should be a nonpartisan priority, simultaneously positing that certain pro-"agribusiness" politicians oppose more social spending to combat hunger.

Families can talk about the issue of hunger and what people can do to help. Can you join a local food bank through your community or house of worship? Can you write a letter as a family to your elected officials? What can your family do?
The experts interviewed in A Place at the Table explain how processed food is a big cause of obesity and poor nutrition, how poverty -- and not a shortage of food -- is the cause of hunger. Can your family's shopping decisions help put better food on not just your table, but everyone's?
Challenge your family to go on the SNAP diet, even for one day, to see what it's like to live on supplemental assistance. How does it affect your nutritional choices? Is it harder than you imagined?

The good stuff

Positive messages: The takeaway is that combating hunger needs to happen on the policy level, not just through charitable institutions. There's a clear call to action: to ask politicians to commit to ensuring that no child goes hungry, particularly since there's no shortage of food in the United States. The specialists explain how poverty and obesity go hand in hand and how you can be obese and malnourished (a doctor calls the phenomenon "stuffed and starved"). Experts also reveal how living with food insecurity means that the food you can afford tends to be processed and bad for you. All of these messages could spur viewers to take action, volunteer their time, write a letter to their elected officials, and most of all, show compassion for the epidemic of food insecurity.
Positive role models: Several amazing role models and advocates are featured, from medical doctors and public health experts like Prof. Mariana Chilton -- who started the Witnesses to Hunger initiative, featuring mothers who deal with food insecurity -- to actor Jeff Bridges, who started the End Hunger Network. There's also a Colorado pastor and his wife who've dedicated their ministry to providing regular food and meals for their struggling congregation, a teacher who goes out of her way to make sure that bags of groceries and snacks are delivered to her hungry students, and a Mississippi teacher who introduces healthy foods in class so her students will ask for healthier alternatives to junk food.

What to watch for

Violence: No violence, but the issue of hunger -- particularly how it affects children -- is upsetting and will likely worry children who are prone to fretting about global issues.
Sexy stuff: Not an issue
Language: Not an issue
Consumerism: Some discount processed food brands are shown or mentioned, as are supermarkets (and their logos) like Piggly Wiggly. But the intent is not to promote those brands but to demonstrate why it's a shame that they're all that low-income families can afford.
Drinking, drugs and smoking: Not an issue

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