Screenings and film festivals The film was screened on 19 May 2013 as a part of the
Critics' Week at the
2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation and positive reviews. It won the Critics' Week Viewers Choice Award also known as Grand Rail d'Or.
Variety called it "a notable debut from tyro helmer-scripter Ritesh Batra", for creating a film with the "crossover appeal of
Monsoon Wedding", and also praised the acting of Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur. Thereafter,
Sony Pictures Classics picked up North American distribution rights. In India, this film was released on more than 400 screens on 20 September 2013. In Japan, a Japanese dubbed version of the film was released on 9 August 2014, screening in a hundred theaters.
Box office The Lunchbox grossed ₹71 million in its first weekend of release in India, and ₹110 million in its first week. The film continued to gross significant amounts over the next few weeks, earning over ₹200 million in the first three weeks and another estimated ₹40–50
lakhs on its fourth weekend. In the United States,
The Lunchbox grossed $4.23 million, and was 2014's third highest grossing foreign film behind
Cantinflas and
P.K.. By 28 May 2014, the film's worldwide collection was . The film's total worldwide gross for the original Hindi version was (). Most of its gross was from overseas with () for the Hindi version, becoming 2013's third
highest-grossing Indian film overseas after
Dhoom 3 and
Chennai Express. It was Irrfan Khan's highest-grossing
Hindi film, up until it was surpassed by
Hindi Medium (2017). In France, it collected over 4m Euros making it one of the top 5 Indian movies of all time in France. The Japanese dubbed version, released later in 2014, screened in a hundred theaters for ten weeks. The film grossed over ( or ) in Japan.
Pratim D. Gupta of
The Telegraph gave
The Lunchbox two thumbs up calling it "as much a moving and muted love story as it is an evocative portrayal of loneliness."
Taran Adarsh of
Bollywood Hungama gave the movie a 4 out of 5 rating, stating "A well-told old-fashioned romance,
The Lunchbox gracefully unknots the trials, tribulations, fears and hopes of everyday people sans the glamour that the city of Mumbai has become synonymous with."
Karan Anshuman of
Mumbai Mirror also gave the film a perfect 5 out of 5 saying the film was, "one of the best films to come out of India in a long time."
Raja Sen of
Rediff.com also praised the film, giving it 5 out of 5 and offering particular compliments to the director Ritesh Batra, stating "Batra, who has also written
The Lunchbox, has allowed his smashing actors tremendous room to improvise, all the while himself sketching in nuanced details about the city, its food-ferriers, and the many disparities Mumbai is crammed with." Filmmaker/critic
Khalid Mohammed of the
Deccan Chronicle said "What stays in the mind at the end of
The Lunchbox is pretty much what stays in mind at the end of a memorable set by jazzmen – not their lapses but the heights they scale." Aditya Grover of
YouthTimes gave it 4 out of 5 stars and said, "
The Lunchbox is delicious and delightful! If you're in the mood to witness genuinely moving cinema, you're in for a treat. The delectable taste of this lunchbox remains in your mouth much after you've left the theatre. Go for it!" Suparna Sharma of
The Asian Age gave it 4 out of 5 stars and said: "
The Lunchbox is a gently pulsating sweet-sad story of loneliness and love, of wilting spirits finding water again. There are three women in three marriages in this film, of which two are ailing. The third one is over, almost, only the last rites haven't been performed. There are two men in the film – one who has lived a full life and is getting ready to quietly slip off the face of the earth; the other is eager to begin… What's both shocking and soothing is what the film shows us — that it takes very little for a soul to come back to life. Mostly, just a hint of hope will do." Trisha Gupta in the
Sunday Guardian wrote "
The Lunchbox is a lovely little film. But it does tick all the boxes that might appeal to festival audiences: quaint Asian urbanism (Mumbai trains, dabba delivery), Indian home-cooking, romance. It provides local colour, without being demandingly untranslatable." In a less positive review for the
Chicago Reader, J. R. Jones criticized the film's premise as a gimmick and its purported use of an "irritating comic foil" in reference to Nawazuddin Siddiqui's and Bharati Achrekar's characters as Shaikh and Mrs. Deshpande, respectively.
Oscar selection controversy The Lunchbox was considered by many people to be a lock as India's selection for the
86th Academy Awards Best Foreign Film Category, with many critics enthusiastically praising it and voting for it to serve as India's nomination. Director
Karan Johar also put his support behind the film saying "All kinds of audience can connect with it and yet within the parameters of love story it is completely unusual. You feel all the love in the world for the protagonists and the unusual aspect of it is they haven't met." However, the selection committee of the
Film Federation of India (FFI) deliberated on 17 September 2013 and decided to send the
Gujarati film The Good Road instead. This decision sparked outrage from many supporters of
The Lunchbox, including its cast and crew. The film's producer
Anurag Kashyap quickly took to
Twitter and expressed his disgust, saying "I don't know who the Federation is, but it goes to show the complete lack of understanding to make films that can travel across borders." He later deleted both his Twitter and
Facebook accounts, saying, "this is a moment of defeat for me, and for independent cinema, because, for once, our chances were great." Karan Johar also said he felt very disappointed that such a wonderful chance at Oscar glory with
The Lunchbox was spoiled.
Guneet Monga,
The Lunchbox other producer, said she was flabbergasted as to how the Federation could select a movie that didn't even have an American distributor, and also listed the number of global festivals and appreciation her film received, concluding that it sadly and supposedly "wasn't enough for the FFI". In an interview with
Siddharth Sivakumar of
Tinpahar,
Goutam Ghose, the chairman of the committee blamed the decision on the media and a backlash based on the hurt pride of the selection committee, revealing: Once it had been submitted to the Oscar selection committee, that committee did not nominate, nor shortlist,
The Good Road; that year's Academy Award winner was Italy's
The Great Beauty. == Adaptations ==