LEAN CUISINE
Bradley Cooper charming as driven chef amid drama with too many empty calories
Burnt, starring Bradley Cooper, might seem familiar because of the actor’s short-lived turn on the TV series Kitchen Confidential a decade ago. The sitcom was based on the volatile, no-holds-barred memoir of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.
And, in Burnt, Cooper plays a volatile, noholds-barred celebrity chef trying to make amends as well as a comeback.
As if following up on the previous character, Adam Jones (Cooper) has given up the self-destructive habits he gained in the wild and woolly world of high-end restaurants.
Burnt, to be fair, does offer a decidedly
different beast from the 30-minute TV comedy.
Directed by John Wells, the film tries to plumb the depths of the chef’s psyche while depicting his obsessive, meticulous dedication to his craft.
The story finds him during his self-ordained penance for his sins, shucking a million oysters in a casual New Orleans joint. He has been driven out of Paris, where he made his career, earning a couple of Michelin stars along the way.
Yet he flamed out fantastically — which the audience knows based on the extreme reactions of his former compatriots, who have decamped to London.
He talks his way into running the restaurant at an upscale London hotel, managed by old buddy Tony (Daniel Bruhl), and even gets some of his old pals to join him, along with a few new faces.
In preparing the restaurant to allow him to earn his third Michelin
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star, he works everyone to the bone. He pulls allnighters with chef Helene (Sienna Miller), whom he has manipulated into helping him; a yeller, he flings tools and food.
Burnt doesn’t overly concern itself with the details of his brilliance; it is repeatedly alluded to and whisked over, but the problem is that his talent is assumed, not proved on-screen. Much of the story is told in montages, compressing time and eliding details that might prove him to the audience.
Everyone around him excuses his bad behavior because of his genius in the kitchen, but, if the audience can’t completely buy into it, then that’s a fatal flaw.
The film is at its best when it reaches into Adam’s background to try to uncover his demons. This comes out in scenes with the excellent Emma Thompson, as a therapist who gives him weekly drug tests; and with Helene’s daughter (Lexi BenbowHart), to whom Adam seems to relate best.
But the psychological deconstruction gets swept away in the frenzy over the Michelin stars and a misguided subplot about a French drug dealer collecting debts.
Burnt is impeccably made, with slick food photography and rapidfire editing that tickle the senses. It has the potential to dig into interesting themes about power, control and psychology in the swaggering wild West of restaurant kitchens, but Burnt is distracted by petty dramas.
Without enough meat on the bones of the story, it doesn’t prove as satisfying as it might — evaporating quickly into thin air.