Screenplay Written by Seth Reiss & Will Tracy
Directed by Mark Mylod
**1/2 (two and a half stars)
RATED R
Some meals just end up not coming into their full fruition, regardless of the ingredients involved and the depth of care to the preparation.
With the nature of food, fine dining and culinary artistry, I would imagine that it is not terribly far fetched to find comparisons with the nature of literature, music, and any other art form, which includes the movies. The potential for greatness or failure always exists and even within the finest of artistic hands and hearts, sometimes the stars are aligned and sometimes they are not.
With the movies, I have often expressed that the act of getting a movie completed and released at all must be akin to a minor miracle let alone the movie in question ending up as the full representation of the artist's vision...or even just being watchable. With food, I can gather that there are similarities in this particular vein, especially in the world of fine dining and elevated courses, in which recipes are and techniques are studied meticulously only to be re-invented over and again in the pursuit of creating that very meal that is completely unique, inventive, showcases the individualistic style of the chef as well as being delicious. It feels like an impossible feat and yet, when it happens, culinary art exists. But, one false move, no matter how miniscule, the art pursued is eluded.
I had this feeling as I viewed Director Mark Mylod's satirical, psychological thriller "The Menu." It is a mostly well constructed piece, a clever idea that is filled with the ingredients, so to speak, and is well executed but one that did leave me wanting. It is not a bad film by any means. It was one that lacked in satisfaction as it did not stick to the cinematic ribs (ahem).
So as not to produce spoilers, I will try to keep the plot description brief. "The Menu" stars Ralph Finnes as celebrity chef Julian Slowik, operator of the exclusive restaurant Hawthorne, which is located upon a private island.
This evening's guests include falling movie star (John Leguizamo) and his personal assistant (Aimee Carrero), a trio of young business partners (played by Rob Yang, Arturo Castro and Mark St. Cyr), a food critic (Janet McTeer) and her editor (Paul Adelstein), a wealthy elderly couple (played by Judith Light and Reed Birney) and finally, young Tyler Ledford (Nicholas Hoult) and his date Margot Mills (Anya Taylor-Joy).
Over the course of the night, the dinner guests will be served an elaborate and increasingly sinister menu leading to a final course that could prove deadly.
Mark Mylod's "The Menu" is elegantly staged, akin to a malevolent play. With its concept of the uber wealthy in a state of glorious travel threatened with a dark underbelly of sociopathic dysfunctions, it feels perfectly timed with the likes of Writer/Director Mike White's "The White Lotus" (2021/2022) series for HBO plus Writer/Director Rian Johnson's "Glass Onion" (2022), yet the end result feels considerably lacking when compared to the aforementioned works.
Where it succeeds best for me, it as a social commentary over our collective cultural identification as "foodies" combined with or due to our exposure to food via a host of television cooking competition reality programming. At its best, and much like how the late, great Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert's long standing presence in movie criticism for television educated and engaged the general public in how to watch, engage with and therefore discuss the movies, our current television food programming has given us similar gifts. We are now armed with a greater knowledge of food, where it comes from, how it is prepared and therefore, we have been given the language of how to discuss food.
It has been quite the populist transition in demystifying the art of cooking while simultaneously upholding it, keeping the exclusivity of fine dining while bringing it it to the masses via our television screens. By learning more about food, we are given the opportunity to understanding how food works with our bodies and how to possibly eat better because of our new found knowledge of how the Science and art of food congeals. All of that being said, and as the old adage expresses, everybody's a critic, and regardless of how much new knowledge we may have when talking about food, everyone is not an expert. For if anyone could prepare food to such an elevated level, then anyone would...and we don't because we can't.
Mark Mylod's "The Menu" plays with that very unctuous, pretentious, pseudo intellectual fashion of preparing and experiencing food within the motivations of Chef Julian Slowick and his doomed patrons, where one false move could present dire consequences regardless of status and cache. Mylod creates a tale of class warfare and and upending societal and economic privileges, something that is actually very reminiscent of Director David Fincher's "The Game" (1993).
Yet, where that film's surrealist aesthetics truly weaved a deeply unsettling spell as a psychological thriller, it is also an exceedingly sharper and ore pointed satire, where "The Menu" overall succeeds in fits and starts. It is indeed fueled by an "eat the rich" narrative while also functioning just this side of horror but it never feels to go as far as it absolutely could.
I did appreciate a certain multi-layered level to the existential horror of the film, especially as it is a parable about a collective of individuals who have amassed everything in their power but have sacrificed all manner of joy from their existence. A joy of inspiration and creation, a snuffing out of the spark that may have first inspired them, yet their main pursuits have become not of any sense of inner ascension but of socio-economic domination which leaves them all as gradually hollow shells rather than full human beings now all facing a certain judgement on this fateful night.
As a thriller, all of the pieces are in place, the performances are strong, the visual sheen and design is effective and truthfully, the first half of the film builds strongly into two or even three shocking crescendos. But, the film overall in terms of its sense of character, as well as an exercise in terror, never really finds its footing in its second half as characters remain underwritten, character motivations are unclear and even questioned within the film by other characters and the participants feel shuffled from one sequence to another without any real consequences other than a plot driven inevitability which ends up undercutting any sense of that under the skin intensity this film needs.
Mark Mylod's "The Menu" is well plated but feels decidedly undercooked and truthfully, in need of a re-fire. For it is one that is indeed lacking in heat!
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