‘The Menu’ is a takedown of snobby food culture
There’s obnoxious, and then there’s foodie obnoxious.
I say this as someone who loves good food and, if not fine dining exactly, at least interesting dining.
I like fine dining too, actually; I just can’t afford it on a regular basis — something that is true of many people and a notion that fuels “The Menu.”
Director Mark Mylod’s over-the-top takedown of snobby food culture doesn’t stop with simply ridiculing the epicurean elite, he takes aim at the ultra-rich that fund the movement while taking the enjoyment out of it for everyday
people by placing it far beyond their reach — which you could say
about a society.
Schadenfreude isn’t the most attractive feeling in the world, but come on, it can be really satisfying. That is the basis of Mylod’s film, in which a small group of diners pay a lot of money and then a lot more for an experience that is a little beyond what they were hoping for.
Yes, that’s vague, because the movie is practically a spoiler from start to finish. But this much is safe to say.
lot of things in contemporary
Anya-Taylor Joy as a skeptical diner is great. And she’s the only likeable guest
A group of 12 diners have paid $1,250 per person to eat at Hawthorne, a restaurant on a remote private island. Everything is locally sourced, meticulously prepared and, obviously, expensive.
We’re first introduced to Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), who worships at the altar of extravagant cuisine, and his date, Margot (Anya-Taylor Joy, never better). She is skeptical of the whole night, making her an audience surrogate and the only person in the whole movie you could even think about sympathizing with, much less rooting for.
There is also an unnamed, washedup actor (John Leguizamo) pitching a reality show, there with his threateningto-quit assistant (Aimee Carrero); Richard (Reed Birney) and Anne (Judith Light), frequent visitors; and three ultra-obnoxious tech bros who are only there because their boss is the majority investor in Hawthorne (Rob Yang, Arturo Castro, Mark St. Cyr).
Rounding out the group (aside from a wild-card guest) is Lillian (Janet McTeer), an absurdly arrogant restaurant critic, and her unctuous editor (Paul Adelstein).
So yeah. Not a lot of heroes at those tables.
A room full of foodie stereotypes
The island is beautiful upon approach but more forbidding the closer you get. They’re greeted by Elsa (Hong Chau), the host who checks everyone in, seemingly having researched every guest. Except Margot, who was not Tyler’s original guest.
A quick tour of the island includes the staff ’s quarters, where they sleep in what looks like a military barracks, cots tightly squeezed together. They work till
the wee hours of the morning and are up before dawn, devoted in full to their boss.
That is Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). He appears after the guests are seated in the dining area with a magnificent view of the water in one direction and the open-concept kitchen in the other.
Courses are prepared with near-microscopic attention to detail (certainly tweezers are employed). Slowik introduces each with a loud clap of his hands, bringing the kitchen to attention. It’s all perfectly ridiculous — do not eat, he implores the guests. Taste.
He serves a bread course without bread, only sauces, after some dim-bulb explanation about its history as peasant food. Tyler hangs on every word, savors every morsel, takes forbidden photos with his iPhone. Lillian passes judgment on every aspect of everything. Margot alone seems immune to the ostentatious display. It’s food, she complains. So what? Tyler is not impressed.
The mood of the ‘The Menu’ changes. And then changes again
And then … things change. The dinner and the film take a darker tone, introduced by tortillas, which reveal a lot more about the guests than they bargained for. It’s a funny moment, satisfying as we watch people who are used
to using money to get their way in any situation embarrassed, even humiliated.
This is just an appetizer for the darkness that is to come.
Mylod, working from a script by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, goes all in on the social commentary. Some of it is funny, some of it appalling, none of it as engaging as when Mylod uses food to make statements.
But Joy and Fiennes display an intensity in their interplay that keeps the whole thing on track. Margot is the only
guest not buying into the increasingly bizarre concept. Slowik is not having it. As the one guest who couldn’t be properly vetted, she remains something of a mystery. Until she doesn’t.
In the end, the whole thing will leave you hungry not for haute cuisine but, funnily enough, a good cheeseburger.
That, too, is no doubt a statement — and one most of us can identify with.