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6.3/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.3/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Pots and Pans remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you like watching two characters lose their minds while trying to flip burgers, sure. People who hate constant clanging noises or high-frequency chaos should probably skip this one. It's not exactly high art, but it’s got a weird energy that makes you wonder who signed the health inspection forms for this place.
The whole premise is just asking for trouble. Putting a cat and a mouse in charge of a diner is a bold strategy, but mostly it just leads to a lot of burnt toast and flying cutlery. 🍳
I found myself actually staring at the background details. There’s a specific shot where a customer is just sitting there waiting for coffee while an anvil is literally falling through the ceiling. Nobody seems to care? It’s bizarre.
The pacing is absolutely manic. It’s like the editor had a triple espresso and decided the movie needed to be 40% faster than humanly comfortable. You don’t get a second to breathe, just constant movement.
It reminds me a bit of the frantic energy in Sleuths and Slickers, where everything happens at once and you just have to hang on. Except here, there’s way more grease and way fewer detectives.
At one point, there’s this sequence with a grease fire that goes on for a solid minute. It stops being funny and starts being just a weird, stressful meditation on poor fire safety protocols. You can tell they were running out of ideas for gags and just decided to make everything explode. 💥
It’s not as cohesive as some of the other stuff from this era, like The First Auto, but it has a certain 'thrown-together' charm. You can almost see the sweat on the animators' brows. It’s a weird, messy little relic.