Directed by Mark Mylod
Language: English
Year: 2022
Shaun’s Rating: 2.3/5 ★
Before Watching:
My Instagram followers will know that I love a good tasting menu as much as the next oblivious New Yorker, and accordingly I have received five separate requests to review this film; always a proponent of democracy and degustation, I decided to dig in. An ensemble cast comprising a menagerie of B-Listers, mignonette, and even the word “mouthfeel” featured prominently in the trailer… what could possibly go wrong? Evidently, quite a bit. Mylod’s 2022 dark comedy cooks up a unique idea, but unfortunately reaches our plates only half-baked and leaves the audience still hungry.
Margot Mills (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her impromptu date Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) board a ship en route to a world class tasting menu dinner at Hawthorne, a satirized composite of modern fine dining restaurants. It was Tyler’s idea, and his disinterest in Margot (he even forgets her name briefly) alongside his obsession with the amuse-bouche paints him as an amusing douche. Other guests include a trio of insufferable business partners, a washed-up actor, a wealthy but miserable couple, and an eminent food critic (Ozark’s Janet McTeer). Hawthorne is under the stewardship of the imperious executive chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) and his maître d’hôtel Elsa (Hong Chau), backed by a full staff of fastidious underlings who share quarters on the island. Margot doesn’t fit in with this crowd, as Elsa is quick to point out—not only is she the only working-class patron, she’s also not even on the guest list. As the first few courses roll out, something fishy is afoot, and it’s not just the scallops.
The Menu mocks the cultish culture of chef worship among “foodies,” as embodied by Tyler’s absurd idolization of Chef Slowik. In a broader sense, it also lambasts how haute cuisine has become an art almost exclusively enjoyed by the wealthy, providing the audience a guilty pleasure class commentary not unlike The White Lotus or Succession1. While the film is quick to build suspense, it also manages to eschew subtlety—jokes land more as meat cleavers than paring knives, and the pasquinade is lost in pasty quips. In fact, the comedy often flies too close to the very level of insider food references that it aims to skewer.
Mylod’s satire is delicious, but most everything else is unpalatable. The writing is so contrived that you begin to wonder when they added a Hell’s Kitchen mod to The Sims—the characters don’t actually do what normal human motivations would dictate in a given situation, they just do whatever the plot requires. Of all the roles for Voldemort, why make him a scary plotter, boy who leavened, come to fry?
The Menu premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. It can now be streamed on HBO Max and seen in select U.S. theaters.
After Watching:
Modern cinema frequently pokes fun at class anxiety across a host of different genres, from Parasite to Triangle of Sadness, from Glass Onion to Bridesmaids. The Menu, however, reminds me most of one particular franchise—the Saw movies. The guests, not unlike the victims in James Wan and Leigh Whannel’s horror flicks, are never established to us as regular people outside the setting of their demise. Mylod’s decision to begin at the boat dock and have the first overheard guest dialogues highlight their moral failings undermines the suspense, as we begin to care less about what actually befalls these schmucks. On the other side of the counter, Julian Slowik is also not a traditional villain; his disillusionment and ingratiated sense of twisted justice (evoking Saw’s John Kramer) frame him more as a martyr, at least enough to keep us laughing while the odd finger is lopped off.
One particularly cringey and incongruous scene was the Man’s Folly course, which felt like an undercooked attempt at mixing in #MeToo themes only to never revisit them. The ensuing chase around the island was so brief and unmotivated that I felt betrayed by the trailer, as if this sequence was just included to record some extra gags and clips implying that the action would eventually progress outside the dining room. In fact, most of the film’s actual jokes were already present in the teaser (with the notable exception of Hong Chau’s incredible “tortillas” delivery). And don’t even get me started on the film’s ending… as Margot took her final bite, I was half expecting a logo to flash on screen: Burger King, Have it Your Way.
In an ironic outcome, the real-life restaurant Noma (on which much of Hawthorne was based) is shutting down due to difficulties operating profitable business at this level. Honestly, have they even considered arson and mass murder? I’m sure a McKinsey consultant already pitched it to them as a way of cutting costs, and they could certainly bring on Caleb Ganzer to handle setting the fires. Just some food for thought…
For which Mylod is actually an executive producer.