Eat, the rich
We're living through a golden age of "the rich are evil and out of touch, and must be destroyed!" pop culture objects being made by people who are, themselves, extremely rich and out of touch, and are acting (one suspects) less out of a place of good honest class betrayal than a neurotic need to think of themselves "The Good Ones". Which, when I phrase it that way, doesn't sound like much of a golden age. A fool's golden age, maybe. Anyway, the latest such movie is The Menu, and I may even ponder saying "the greatest", since it actually turns out to be pretty enjoyable on its own terms, and as long as you don't need it to be too precise in its satiric aims. In truth, I think the logline of The Menu gives us a clearer sense of what targets screenwriters Seth Reiss & Will Tracy were looking to hit than the movie itself, which starts off a bit muddled in its themes and ends up clarifying what's going on in ways that do manage to largely clear up the first muddle but only by replacing it with a different muddle. But the film has Will Ferrell and Adam McKay onboard as two of its six (!) producers, that alone probably gives us a decent sense of how things were likely to go off-course, and it's anyway better than any of McKay's own "I make Important Political Art now" films as director.
So anyways, that logline: The Menu finds twelve disparate people arriving on a dock where they are headed by boat to Hawthorn, a private island that is home to one of the world's most exclusive restaurants, also named Hawthorn, where chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) reigns as one of the world's most renowned culinary innovators. Eleven of the twelve diners this night are some variety of entitled, rich, and unlikable, which makes the twelfth our obvious protagonist, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), who's a bit tough to figure out until the film tells us what's going on later, but she is, at a minimum, not remotely interested in the kind of ultra-modern cuisine that's in store for her, and is not trying even a little to pretend otherwise in the face of her embarrassingly eager date, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), for whom this meal appears to be the culmination of all of his life's dreams, and who will spend the whole of the meal breathlessly explaining, despite her impenetrable disinterest, how this or that scientific technique or theoretical concept is at play in whichever meal. And the meal starts right there on the boat, in the form of an amuse-bouche that quickly demonstrates two things: first that Dominique Crenn, head chef of Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, and this movie's food designer and technical consultant, is an extraordinary visual artist and her dishes look exquisite; second that director Mark Mylod and cinematographer Peter Deming are not extraordinary visual artists, or at least there's not going to be any evidence of that here (Deming, who shot both Mulholland Dr. and the 2017 third season of Twin Peaks, has nothing to prove, but it's still distressing how much he's not proving it anyway). It would, admittedly, probably count as hypocrisy for something as loudly repulsed by foodie culture as The Menu to indulge in any food porn imagery, but it's still a little jarring how flat the film mostly looks, with an addiction to mostly indistinguishable shallow-focus medium close-ups that make it hard to figure out quite where any two characters are relative to each other, if they're not at the same table and editor Christopher Tellefsen editor can fake it. The food deserves better than this, is what I'm saying; so does the production design by Ethan Tobman, which makes Hawthorn look splendidly like a precisely-designed, slightly chilly, and murderously tasteful temple to the highest-class, most minimalist elegance that lots and lots of money can buy.
The film is structured around Slowik's tasting menu for the evening, with onscreen titles accompanying each new course and approximately breaking the story down into its major beats: over the course of the dinner, the twelve patrons will be a little struck and confused by how particularly hostile Slowik and the staff seem this night, and as it progresses, they'll grow alarmed at his increasingly dark monologues introducing each course, and seeming to implicate the diners themselves as part of some undefined but clearly pressing problem. In due course, The Menu turns into a sort of thriller, where it appears likely that Slowik might not intend for them to leave the island alive, and I say "sort of" a thriller because the vibe is always very distinctly in favor of dark comedy rather than tension. And it's at times very dark comedy at that, often with no indication other than Fiennes's immaculate deadpan deliveries to suggest that anything funny is happening at all.
Which is where The Menu reveals its secret weapon: an extremely strong cast who are all able to get onto a very specific and very weird register, one that's going for humor based in constantly being startled and maybe even confused, rather than "jokes" as such. As befits a chef, Fiennes very much controls the tone of the movie; it doesn't entirely snap into focus until he shows up, and offers the calming, droning staccato line deliveries that he'll constantly tweak and nuance across the film's 106 minutes (which are extremely well-paced right up until they're very suddenly not, but the movie is mostly done by that point), darkening and filling with icy rage while never breaking the stately march of his measured tempo. Any emotions he feels, he feels almost exclusively with his eyes. It's a superb performance even by the standards of an extremely reliable actor, the best that Fiennes has been in a movie since The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014.
There aren't really any bad performances in the cast beyond Fiennes, either, though I will say that I've never had a harder time believing Taylor-Joy in anything; the part is a bit oddly-written and forestalls her from working with certain important details for much too long, but also she's overplaying her character's alleged "jes' folks" irritation with the rich excess all around her, making Margot feel less like a voice of common wisdom and more like an irritable killjoy. It's unfortunate that the film's weakest major performance is attached to the central role, but those are the breaks. Anyway, outside of her, it's all pretty great, even in small performances given by actors who only come to the fore in one scene. My next-favorite cast member after Fiennes, for the record, is most likely Hong Chau, as the maître d' Elsa, who does an excellent job adding knife-sharp edges to Fiennes's laconic doominess. But there's really no lack of people making precise impressions without much to work with. Truth be told, The Menu has a hard time (or, more likely, simply isn't interested in) giving its characters significant interiority, mostly content to cast them all as types - The Arrogant Critic, The Smarmy Actor, The Rich Show-Off, The Idiot Fanboy - and only really giving any kind of texture to Margot and Slowik. Which feels like some kind of satire, though not the satire that I think the film thinks it's making: it at one point seems to be setting up a thing about the kitchen staff at a restaurant being more worthy of attention than the egocentric jerks eating there, but then it resolutely fails to make any of the staff feel like people outside of a few isolated scenes.
Which gets me back to my main reservation with The Menu: it's pretty apparent that it believes itself to be smarter than is the case. The satiric barbs have no bite, coming up with only some pretty generic complaints about the culture around haute cuisine, your general "boy, it sure does seem like you pay a lot for such small plates!" kind of shtick, and the anti-rich satire pretty much stalls out at "huh, the rich! They seem like a bunch of real jerks!". And neither of these are exactly cutting-edge observations. It's not ultimately something that does much to ruin the movie: it doesn't need to be terribly bold and groundbreaking thematically to be a well-acted black comedy with some nice design elements. But since it obviously wants to be those things, I wish it was at least a little bit better at them.
Tim Brayton is the editor-in-chief and primary critic at Alternate Ending. He has been known to show up on Letterboxd, writing about even more movies than he does here.
If you enjoyed this article, why not support Alternate Ending as a recurring donor through Patreon, or with a one-time donation via Paypal? For just a dollar a month you can contribute to the ongoing health of the site, while also enjoying several fun perks!
So anyways, that logline: The Menu finds twelve disparate people arriving on a dock where they are headed by boat to Hawthorn, a private island that is home to one of the world's most exclusive restaurants, also named Hawthorn, where chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) reigns as one of the world's most renowned culinary innovators. Eleven of the twelve diners this night are some variety of entitled, rich, and unlikable, which makes the twelfth our obvious protagonist, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), who's a bit tough to figure out until the film tells us what's going on later, but she is, at a minimum, not remotely interested in the kind of ultra-modern cuisine that's in store for her, and is not trying even a little to pretend otherwise in the face of her embarrassingly eager date, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), for whom this meal appears to be the culmination of all of his life's dreams, and who will spend the whole of the meal breathlessly explaining, despite her impenetrable disinterest, how this or that scientific technique or theoretical concept is at play in whichever meal. And the meal starts right there on the boat, in the form of an amuse-bouche that quickly demonstrates two things: first that Dominique Crenn, head chef of Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, and this movie's food designer and technical consultant, is an extraordinary visual artist and her dishes look exquisite; second that director Mark Mylod and cinematographer Peter Deming are not extraordinary visual artists, or at least there's not going to be any evidence of that here (Deming, who shot both Mulholland Dr. and the 2017 third season of Twin Peaks, has nothing to prove, but it's still distressing how much he's not proving it anyway). It would, admittedly, probably count as hypocrisy for something as loudly repulsed by foodie culture as The Menu to indulge in any food porn imagery, but it's still a little jarring how flat the film mostly looks, with an addiction to mostly indistinguishable shallow-focus medium close-ups that make it hard to figure out quite where any two characters are relative to each other, if they're not at the same table and editor Christopher Tellefsen editor can fake it. The food deserves better than this, is what I'm saying; so does the production design by Ethan Tobman, which makes Hawthorn look splendidly like a precisely-designed, slightly chilly, and murderously tasteful temple to the highest-class, most minimalist elegance that lots and lots of money can buy.
The film is structured around Slowik's tasting menu for the evening, with onscreen titles accompanying each new course and approximately breaking the story down into its major beats: over the course of the dinner, the twelve patrons will be a little struck and confused by how particularly hostile Slowik and the staff seem this night, and as it progresses, they'll grow alarmed at his increasingly dark monologues introducing each course, and seeming to implicate the diners themselves as part of some undefined but clearly pressing problem. In due course, The Menu turns into a sort of thriller, where it appears likely that Slowik might not intend for them to leave the island alive, and I say "sort of" a thriller because the vibe is always very distinctly in favor of dark comedy rather than tension. And it's at times very dark comedy at that, often with no indication other than Fiennes's immaculate deadpan deliveries to suggest that anything funny is happening at all.
Which is where The Menu reveals its secret weapon: an extremely strong cast who are all able to get onto a very specific and very weird register, one that's going for humor based in constantly being startled and maybe even confused, rather than "jokes" as such. As befits a chef, Fiennes very much controls the tone of the movie; it doesn't entirely snap into focus until he shows up, and offers the calming, droning staccato line deliveries that he'll constantly tweak and nuance across the film's 106 minutes (which are extremely well-paced right up until they're very suddenly not, but the movie is mostly done by that point), darkening and filling with icy rage while never breaking the stately march of his measured tempo. Any emotions he feels, he feels almost exclusively with his eyes. It's a superb performance even by the standards of an extremely reliable actor, the best that Fiennes has been in a movie since The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014.
There aren't really any bad performances in the cast beyond Fiennes, either, though I will say that I've never had a harder time believing Taylor-Joy in anything; the part is a bit oddly-written and forestalls her from working with certain important details for much too long, but also she's overplaying her character's alleged "jes' folks" irritation with the rich excess all around her, making Margot feel less like a voice of common wisdom and more like an irritable killjoy. It's unfortunate that the film's weakest major performance is attached to the central role, but those are the breaks. Anyway, outside of her, it's all pretty great, even in small performances given by actors who only come to the fore in one scene. My next-favorite cast member after Fiennes, for the record, is most likely Hong Chau, as the maître d' Elsa, who does an excellent job adding knife-sharp edges to Fiennes's laconic doominess. But there's really no lack of people making precise impressions without much to work with. Truth be told, The Menu has a hard time (or, more likely, simply isn't interested in) giving its characters significant interiority, mostly content to cast them all as types - The Arrogant Critic, The Smarmy Actor, The Rich Show-Off, The Idiot Fanboy - and only really giving any kind of texture to Margot and Slowik. Which feels like some kind of satire, though not the satire that I think the film thinks it's making: it at one point seems to be setting up a thing about the kitchen staff at a restaurant being more worthy of attention than the egocentric jerks eating there, but then it resolutely fails to make any of the staff feel like people outside of a few isolated scenes.
Which gets me back to my main reservation with The Menu: it's pretty apparent that it believes itself to be smarter than is the case. The satiric barbs have no bite, coming up with only some pretty generic complaints about the culture around haute cuisine, your general "boy, it sure does seem like you pay a lot for such small plates!" kind of shtick, and the anti-rich satire pretty much stalls out at "huh, the rich! They seem like a bunch of real jerks!". And neither of these are exactly cutting-edge observations. It's not ultimately something that does much to ruin the movie: it doesn't need to be terribly bold and groundbreaking thematically to be a well-acted black comedy with some nice design elements. But since it obviously wants to be those things, I wish it was at least a little bit better at them.
Tim Brayton is the editor-in-chief and primary critic at Alternate Ending. He has been known to show up on Letterboxd, writing about even more movies than he does here.
If you enjoyed this article, why not support Alternate Ending as a recurring donor through Patreon, or with a one-time donation via Paypal? For just a dollar a month you can contribute to the ongoing health of the site, while also enjoying several fun perks!
