OUT NOW: The Menu

 On the island of Hawthorne, a group of high-rolling guests have arrived to taste the menu of renowned chef Slowick (Ralph Fiennes).

As the courses are brought out, the guests, particularly outsider Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), begin to realise that the Chef’s plans for the evening are more sinister than breadless bread.

On an embarrassing note, I had to take a phone call midway through the film and had to step out for about a minute - thankfully nothing happened while I was outside the theatre (it was during one of Fiennes’s monologues, which I could hear through the door.

This is a movie of micro dark giggles - Tyler’s (Nicholas Hoult) sociopathic focus on each course, washed-up actor George Díaz (John Leguizamo)  and his assistant  Felicity’s (Aimee Carrero) conflict; the three entitled Wall Street bros (Arturo Castro, Rob Yang and Mark St. Cyr); the food critic Lillian Bloom (Janet McTeer) and her endlessly sycophantic editor Ted (Paul Adelstein).

While pitched as a comedy, The Menu was not laugh-out-loud funny.

There is a point midway through when the women are eating while the men are being chased down and try to ingratiate themselves with one of the chefs, which produced some chuckles.

 

It might also be because it is the one time where the film feels like it is escalating - when the male guests are returned to the dinner, the air gets let out of the movie.

In the main role, Anya Taylor-Joy is fine but a little anonymous  - I am starting to wonder if she works better in supporting roles. 

Fiennes is good as the Chef, but I was a little confused about the character’s motives.

There is something in the way the film wants to be a story about the artistry of cooking, it’s disposability as a marker of the upper classes, that feels contrived and overreaching. 

To paraphrase from the text, it feels more conceptual than functional as a film.

The movie wants to be a satire but it’s not pointed enough; it wants to be a thriller but it is not that tense.

Margot’s final action is interesting but there is no sense of catharsis - and the fact that it hangs on making a hamburger feels confused. It is ironic that the Chef saves his passion by making the most commercialised food item, but I was a little lost.

Maybe it rewards a rewatch, but I was finding it hard to remember what happened in the movie minutes after it ended.

  

As is, The Menu is mildly enjoyable but forgettable.