The Menu
It's an extremely trashy movie, until it gets to the middle, from then on the movie gets good, and a story unfolds as it gets to the end the movie goes back to what it was at the beginning.
The Menu, is a work of "haute cuisine", demonstrating the follies and pressures that a great chef suffers during his trajectory to perfection.
I definitely can't say it's amazing, just a huge fail as far as good storytelling goes. The menu takes participants on a journey through incredible dishes, with ingredients of the highest gastronomic standard. Failures happen, and your participants realize, of course if you discover here lies your life. Appreciate and taste your work, and thus you will live.
Your night is over as soon as you've had dessert, well it would be, if you didn't insult the chef by "saying you prefer a cheeseburger to his super sophisticated food" - And I savored his work, and finally, as in any restaurant, take it to travel and be happy.
The Menu is a great work of haute cuisine and the madness of a psychopath. It never was and never will be a cinematographic work of respect. Good, a movie that you would easily see on a tour of the short and thick catalog of Netflix.
Note for gastronomic night: 10/10
Overall grade: 08/10
Chefs Table meets Midsommar with a streak of dark humour, The Menu is a tension-filled night out that can't quite balance the richness of it's message with the smoothness of it's cast, but somehow manages to still come out delicious. While I feel a little targeted by this movies critique of the artist/critic dichotomy*, I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't fully satiated at the end of this lengthy, multicourse meal; the appetiser didn't match the main course, and worse the dessert was bitter and unbefitting of what preceded it. While on reflection I enjoyed each piece of this movie individually (and there are some very memorable moments throughout), it didn't quite gel together as one cohesive whole for me. Maybe that's by choice, a reflection of the chaos of creation and the immense pressure placed upon the creators by critics such as myself? Eitherway, something feels unfinished, regardless of how delicious the individual courses themselves are. Good, even very good, but not great.
*I will say, the movie has made me feel a little existential with the way it called out critics for not understanding the work that goes into the things they haphazardly cast aside with a sentence and a snarl. As an armchair film reviewer on this very website, I completely teardown peoples work on a near daily basis; work that has taken them years to acquire the knowledge to craft and present to me through the medium of film, just for me to attach a score and a quick review laden with pokes and quips at their expense. As someone who hasn't the foggiest idea of how to even begin to make a movie (outside the basics of point a camera and start rolling), I'm now questioning my position in this creator/consumer situationship I find myself in. To further add to this, I feel like Tyler and his obsession with Slowiks work in respect to my love of video games. I understand the in's and out's of game production, who developed what and a rough year of when it came out, but if I tried to apply any of the knowledge to the actual act of making video games? Well, mine would probably come out bullshit too. The more I muse on this movie and the way it has made me second guess myself, maybe my impression and score will increase with time. Maybe a second viewing is in order for me to fully appreciate everything on show here. We shall see.
This thing is quite annoying, it’s essentially Tár if the protagonist was turned into a cartoon villain and the movie lacked any subtlety in its messaging.
Within 15 minutes I had a grasp on its shtick (artistic ego; pretension; wealthy people being out of touch), and it never surprised me in an interesting way beyond that shtick, so the movie got old for me very fast.
Not only that, but I could see it potentially leaving those who label any piece of art that requires thought as ‘pretentious’ feeling empowered, which we don’t need in a world where people are getting more illiterate by the day. Not that I think that that’s the film’s intention, but it’s the most obvious read and a better director would’ve made sure that the film can’t be interpreted that way.
It’s completely predictable if you’re paying attention, and most of the comedy I found to be absolutely eye rolling; it’s so obvious and on the nose all the time because it keeps recycling the same joke over and over again. Look at these ridiculous, pretentious descriptions for food, aren't we clever? Yes, but maybe don't do that joke for every single course.
The characters are non existent (everybody is playing a caricature), the logic and character motivations are paper thin and the directing/cinematography are completely average.
The only thing I genuinely liked is the acting (Ralph Fiennes is amazing), and I guess it’s decently paced. The food and sets look nice, but this script needed a bunch of rewrites.
4/10
Review by drqshadowBlockedParent2023-02-14T15:44:54Z
We join The Menu on a private pier, alongside a dozen snooty, well-dressed guests awaiting transport to an exclusive island retreat. There resides a world-renowned chef, plus an eerily devoted kitchen staff, who have prepared a culinary experience like no other. As we’re led through a tour of the grounds, curtly seated and served our first expensive wine pairing, a sense of unease settles over the room. There’s tension in the air, a mutual holding of the breath that disturbs the once-cordial atmosphere between dining partners and envelopes the celebrity chef like a cloak as he stands before the room to introduce the first course.
The film’s basic premise is that everyone has something to hide, no matter how they choose to disguise it, but it’s crafty about illustrating that point. Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) has a personal bone to pick with all in attendance, save for one last-minute substitution (Anya Taylor-Joy), and uses the contents of the meal to voice those complaints. Dished in gratuitous detail and served with an itemized list of ingredients, it’s half high-end food porn and half salacious tell-off, with a spicy side tray of dark humor. Like its thematic contemporary, Glass Onion, The Menu works a fine balance between witty laughs and creepy suspense. Helplessly, we guess (often wrong but sometimes right) about the next surprise. We laugh at the absurdity of the menu, the vapidity of the social elite and the icy boldness of the staff. And, in the end, we’re left a little unnerved. Well done, all around.