The Menu Review

2022 has proven to be an utterly fantastic year for film, probably being one of the best years in film since 2019. And another factor that linked these two years in films together was that both had films that either criticized class or critiqued the rich and elite. 2019 had films with these themes such as Us, Ready or Not, Knives Out, and Parasite while 2022 gave us films like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Triangle of Sadness, and today’s subject: The Menu. The screenplay was developed by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, and was featured on the 2019 Black List, a survey that lists popular film screenplays that have yet to be produced. Produced by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell and directed by Mark Myold, The Menu proves to be a darkly comic and incredibly sharp satire about the world of haute cuisine.

The film follows young couple Margot Mills (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Tyler Ledford (Nicholas Hoult) who travel to a remote island to dine at Hawthorn, an exclusive restaurant owned and operated by the renowned celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). Amongst the dining guests are food critic Lillian Bloom (Janet McTeer) and her editor Ted (Paul Adelstein), rich couple Richard (Reed Birney) and Anne Liebbrandt (Judith Light), finance bros Soren (Arturo Castro), Bryce (Rob Yang), and Dave (Mark St. Cyr), and washed up actor George Diaz (John Leguizamo) and his assistant Felicity Lynn (Aimee Carrero). However, Slowik has prepared some shocking surprises for his dinner guests, as the evening takes on a shocking and darker turn.

A phenomenal cast with great performances from Joy, Hoult, and Fiennes.

One of the strengths of the film has to be its ensemble cast, especially the performances of the three leads. Anya Taylor-Joy is fantastic as Margot, who serves as a viewpoint character for the world of fine dining and the culinary industry. She’s more or less the straight man throughout the movie, namely getting laughs from her deadpan demeanor and her reactions to certain events. And as the film goes on, it becomes more clear that she is the only dinner guest who’s a decent person in an entourage of self-absorbed snobs.

On the opposite end is Taylor-Joy’s co-lead Nicholas Hoult, who is an underappreciated talent and is really great here. He plays the part as a really immature and pretentious foodie, between taking repeatedly taking pictures of each of the dishes with his phone and using overly flowery and poetic language to describe surface level observations about the food (such as saying that he can pick out the bergamot in bergamot tea). He’s condescending to Margot about how she doesn’t appreciate the cooking, and even when the evening devolves into complete chaos, all Tyler is focused on is eating Slowik’s cooking and impressing him. And Hoult plays the part convincingly and brilliantly.

And then there’s Ralph Fiennes’ performance as Slowik, who brings a commanding presence to the role that just demands your attention. He plays the part as incredibly dour while also being very polite, and comes across as if  Hannibal Lecter were a gourmet Michelin Star chef. The passion and love he once had for his craft has been slowly drained out of him over the years by his clientele, leaving an incredibly jaded man. What’s great in particular about this performance is all of the speeches that Slowik gives when introducing each of the courses of the evening. It’s a performance that makes great use of Fiennes and his talents.

The rest of the dinner guests are great, especially in how they are portrayed. There has been a recent trend in horror films as of late in which characters that are supposed to be horrible people are portrayed in a realistic manner. It’s conveyed that they are horrible, but still come across as fleshed out people you’d encounter in real life rather than insufferable and unbearable caricatures who you are just waiting to see die. Such recent examples include Midsommar, Bodies Bodies Bodies, and Justin Long’s character in Barbarian. And The Menu is no different in this regard. They’re initially shown as having an obnoxious sense of superiority because of their wealth and status. Be it Lillian’s pompous self-regard, with always having something caustic and negative to say about each of courses, with Ted parroting everything she says back at her. Or how Bryce, Soren, and Dave flaunt how they work for the finance firm that bankrolls Slowik’s restaurant in order to get special treatment. However, this arrogance slowly erodes over the course of the movie as they realize that situation they’re in.

Slowik’s kitchen crew, on the other hand, or portrayed as being a cult, between their slavish dedication to their craft and utter devotion and loyalty to Slowik himself. A particular standout amongst them has to be Hong Chau as Elsa, the maître’ d’ and Slowik’s right hand woman. She is completely passive aggressive in the role, throwing back the condescension of the guests right back in their face underneath a calm, collected, and unfailingly polite veneer of professionalism. And she even delivers subtle barbs to them as well. It’s a comparatively small part that’s still a standout amongst the cast.

A sharp and applicable satire about the world of fine dining.

The Menu was advertised being like a horror film in all of its trailers. However, there is more to the film than at first glance. While it’s still very much a horror film (and in some aspects is more like a psychological thriller), the horror takes a backseat to the film’s elements of black comedy and satire. The film is increasingly tense as it goes along, but this balances out by it getting darkly funnier. The film’s satire is also incredibly on point about both modern fine dining and the people who partake in it. The dishes in the film are described as being made “not with love, but obsession”, with the focus on them being artistic expressions and experiences rather than being nutritious, tasty, or filling. The clientele, on the other hand, are people who don’t enjoy or appreciate the food at Hawthorne, but only the privilege of being able to dine there (where reservations cost $1250 per person). A perfect scene that highlights this satire is where the guests are served a bread course. It starts with Julian giving a speech about how bread was always considered to be a staple food of the poor and working class (bringing up how the ancient Greek peasants would dip their morning bread in wine). However, he gives the guests a proverbial middle finger by serving them a breadless bread course consisting only of accompaniments (different condiments and dipping sauces), throwing their affluence right back in their faces. Guests  like Tyler and Lillian praise it as a stroke of artistic genius while the working class Margot is able to pick up on the insult. It’s overall a great work of satire.

As fitting for a film about haute cuisine, the presentation of the cooking and food in the film is great. The filmmakers brought on Dominque Crenn, a French Michelin chef who owns and operates the San Francisco restaurant Atelier Crenn, to design the food of the film, and David Geilb, the director behind the Netflix docuseries Chef’s Table, to recreate the filming style of the aforementioned series for the scenes of food preparation. The scenes of the kitchen staff creating each of the meals is engaging and fascinating to watch, in a sense that we are seeing artists at their work making their next piece. And this metaphor of artists is reflected in the food, in that they are pretty and interesting to look at, complete with perfect presentation, but don’t look particularly appetizing. Overall, the best scene of this cooking is the preparation and making of a humble cheeseburger, which is up there as one of the most culinarily cathartic scenes in cinema, alongside Kevin preparing the chef’s special of pollo a la plancha in Moonlight.

The film’s satire not only works for the world of fine dining, but to an interest that is near and dear to my heart: film. The use of gourmet, haute cuisine and those who consume it is akin to certain film lovers who only search out thematically or artistically brilliant films by the likes of acclaimed directors, and the guests’ focus on the presentation and look of the film over whenever it is filling is like how these types of film fans only care about the aforementioned film aspects over the film itself being entertaining. In particular, Tyler’s condescending and pretentious nature reminds me of the worst and most insufferable kinds of film fans who only seek out foreign films or films by auteur directors over something like a blockbuster with mainstream appeal. In keeping with the food analogy, I’m reminded of a certain phrase that’s common amongst circles who love to collect films as a hobby: “everybody has both ribeye and cheeseburger in their collection”. This refers to the two different qualities of film that reflect the aforementioned film. The pricey and high-class ribeye are thematic, artistic, and acclaimed films from directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Martin Scorsese, and Wong Kar Wai. The cheap yet tasty cheeseburger are films that are usually dismissed as mindless entertainment like action movies or horror films. Viewing the satire of The Menu through the lenses of films makes it a more engaging experience.

The Menu is an overall excellent movie, a fun look that lampoons the world of fine dining and those who partake in it. The lead performances are brilliant, from the likes of Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult, to the always fantastic Ralph Fiennes. The film does a great job of satirizing haute cuisine and the rich, privileged elite, delivering the film in a tense yet darkly funny package. The presentation and cooking of the food in the film is fascinating, and its satire of haute cuisine can be applicable to the hobby and interest of film. It’s a brilliant work that I highly recommend checking out.

The Menu is currently available on HBO Max and can be bought on Blu-Ray and Digital.