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| Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy in "The Menu" Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com |
It’s always neat to see films about cooking. While we’ve had movies like “Ratatouille” and “Chef” that’ve made audiences salivate over what they’re watching, we also had a film like last year’s “Pig” and this year’s hit TV series “The Bear” present a very tense side to how chefs and cooking are presented on screen. As with any industry, there’ve been changes to how we view dining, with the rise in food bloggers, social-media photos of meals, and trendy restaurants.
Director Mark Mylod uses that as the focus for his darkly comedic thriller, “The Menu,” a film that offers an enjoyable and tense ride that will make you feel the heat of the kitchen.
When Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and his companion, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), get invited with other guests to a high-end restaurant run by celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) on a private island, they’re given a dinner unlike anything they’ve encountered. However, as the night goes, it becomes clear that the guests’ lives may be at stake.
Fiennes brings a disturbing performance as the militaristic chef who demands perfection from course to course. He delivers an uncomfortable sense of serenity as he moves around his restaurant and kitchen, showing someone who’s at one with his surroundings and in total control of the culinary hierarchy. He never fails to make you quiver as you keep wondering what dastardly tricks he has hidden under his chef’s jacket. Fiennes carries a piercing look in his eye and a calm voice as he speaks with others, showing a faux friendliness that’s hiding something much more sinister.
Taylor-Joy delivers a fine performance as someone who’s wittily unimpressed with the pageantry of the island restaurant. As she accomplished in many of her other film roles, Taylor-Joy elicits an on-screen magnetism and confidence of an actress who never feels the need to overdue it when performing, but can draw your attention with the simplest of movements and line deliveries. Taylor-Joy’s presents someone who’s wise to the façade of pretentious restaurants and is immune to their self-indulgent, complicated dining rituals.
While the whole supporting cast is fun to watch, the two standouts are Hoult and Hong Chau, who plays Elsa, the restaurant’s maitre d’ and Slowik’s second-in-command. Hoult is entertainingly annoying as someone who’s obsessed with Slowik, doing whatever he can to stay in Slowik’s good graces and impress him with his knowledge of food. Meanwhile, Chau is unnerving and darkly funny as her character keeps a watchful eye over the guests to ensure that everything happens according to her boss’ liking.
The screenplay by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy loses some of its subtly near the end, but it still offers a funny, thrilling, and disturbing premise that’ll entice you with its sense of mystery as you wonder where it’s all headed and what will become of the guests. The narrative’s broken into sections, each focusing on a course of the meal, and as we move further into the evening, we’re left to speculate what devilish ideas the writers have planned for the unwitting guests. Despite the aforementioned heavy-handedness near the end, the rest of the movie is still able to make the characters humorous without going overboard with their obnoxiousness, and the mix of humor and violent shocks within the story keeps you absorbed in the craziness of the situation.
Mylod keeps the suspense going as we move from one course to another. With the many pressure-cooker confrontations between the characters and not knowing what a certain course is going to contain, Mylod highlights those interactions with the claustrophobic nature of the film’s setting. Through this, he makes us feel the growing apprehension that the characters go through as they start to realize that they might not make it out of the restaurant alive.
If your stomach is growling for an entertaining, fast-paced original thriller, “The Menu” has many of the right ingredients.
Grade: A-
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