Movie Reaction: The Menu

Formula: Ready or Not * Burnt

 

I'm naturally suspicious about movie meant as commentary about the 1%. It's too easy to be very lazy with an "eat the rich movie". Money doesn't make a person evil any more than being poor makes one noble. What I've found is the best way to go after upper-crust people is to make them fools rather than villains. The truth is, few people are masterminds but almost everyone is stupid. What makes the rich different is that their stupidity has more significance; not inherently, just circumstantially.

 

The Menu is a black comedy about high dining. A group of people including a wealthy foodie, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), and his date, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), have reservations at a very exclusive restaurant run by chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). Each reservation is over $1000 per person for only a dozen people a night, who are taken to the chef's island for a multi-course meal. Only, something isn't right this night. The chef has malevolent plans. As the trailers make no secret, the patrons that night are there to die, they discover.

 

This is an extreme movie. It's not about subtlety. Fiennes plays the over-the-top caricature of a famous chef. His staff's devotion to him is comically extreme. The patrons that night run the spectrum of people who would be found at a place like this: couples who go so often that it's commonplace (Judith Light, Reed Birney), pretentious food reviewers (Janet McTeer), celebrities using this as a status symbol (John Leguizamo), tech bros who think these experiences are their right (Arturo Castro, Rob Yang, Mark St. Cyr), and exhausting foodies (Nicolas Hoult). What I ended up appreciating the most about the movie is that it's not directly making statements about any of these character types. Fiennes' chef is the one making the judgments, and since he's an exaggeration himself, it never feels like the film is yelling at me. The movie is just having a good time letting these extreme characters play off each other.

 

Fiennes has embraced that he's a master of comic pretension. He carries himself like a Bond villain. At times as his plan unfolds, he seems like one. In the end though, he's not that difficult to figure out. Anya Taylor-Joy is great as a last-minute replacement invitee and the wrench thrown into the story. She is the true outsider looking into this world. I really like that the film doesn't have her quip about the lunacy. She just plain doesn't play along with it and that becomes her superpower.

 

The Menu is very darkly funny. It invites a lot of commentary without demanding that you buy into it. A character like the food critic should annoy me, because critics in films are often used as a way for filmmakers to vent. Director Mark Mylod doesn't have that kind of agenda though. He's just there to have fun with the idea. This film is less about the surprises than I expected, which is its own kind of surprise. It's much more about having fun along the way. If it happens to make a point in the process: great.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend