Competently made - with believable performances from Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, and the rest of its cast - but 'The Kitchen' suffers from a mediocre, paint-by-numbers script that wastes the full potential of the story.

It's 1978 Hell's Kitchen. The city is a mess. Kevin O'Carroll and his two criminal friends are arrested for a liquor store robbery. Their wives, Kathy Brennan (Melissa McCarthy),Ruby O'Carroll (Tiffany Haddish),and Claire Walsh (Elisabeth Moss),are left waiting for handouts from the Irish mob. Kevin's mom Helen (Margo Martindale) is an intimidating mob leader's widow. Her son Little Jackie is running the Irish mob into the ground and gives the wives only crumbs. The ladies decide to take matters into their own hand. They find the local shop owners more receptive to them and start cutting into the mob's protection racket.

The movie opens with the info that this is a comic book movie. By halfway through, I had forgotten while feeling the story unrealistic and lacking the grit of a true mobster movie. The movie ends and I'm reminded that this is a comic book movie. I realize that this movie struggles to give reality to material that is unreal. It needs someone to say why these women are allowed to take over without trying to the quirky fun. When the backlash comes, I had hopes but the movie still struggles. This touches on all the major social issues but the touch is fairly light. It suggests. It comments. It pulls its punches. This is a mobster movie through the filter of female empowerment and the modern comic book. It could be so much greater.

When gangsters caught robbing go away for three years, their wives (Melissa MCarthy, Tiffany Haddsh and Elisabeth Moss find that the money provided by the Westies' current leader won't pay their rents, let alone their other bills. So they take over the collections themselves, forge alliances with the Mafia and demonstrate that women can do anything men can, and fake orgasms besides.

It's based on the Vertigo comic, and it's some fine story telling and acting by everyone on hand -- although Domhnall Gleeson's character is badly written or badly edited. Some good location shooting substitutes the South Bronx for Hell's Kitchen, and it's done all right, barring the occasional wrong name on a worn sign or the fact that it always seems to be Sunday, judging by the trash in the streets, and they have the wrong prices on display in what's supposed to be Esposito's. Special kudos to Bill Camp, playing the Mafia don who's scary, charming and funny, all at the same time.