The Menu samples some familiar, but tasty, flavors
Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, and John Leguizamo endure a costly meal (in more ways than one) in this entertaining eat-the-rich satire
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Even for many self-professed “foodies,” it’s insane to spend a hefty amount on a spread consisting of eight bite-sized courses. Squandering hundreds of dollars on a dime-sized portion of deconstructed and deglazed huckleberry foam (I don’t actually know whether this is a thing, I just made it up), at a time when there’s a crushing baby formula shortage? On sheer principle, let’s say please. Then again, where do you draw the line between yourself and the upper ranks of the bourgeoisie in a capitalistic society founded on inequality, where everyone seems to be in possession of certain advantages and assets that others aren’t? And isn’t splurging a little bit, perhaps for a special occasion once in a blue moon, innocent enough?
Not that anyone has to ruminate on such humanitarian and lefty considerations in Mark Mylod’s deliciously light The Menu, a dark eat-the-rich comedy-thriller that goes down more like a fancy bistro burger with a side of crunchy pommes frites than an extravagant tasting menu of once-in-a-lifetime flavors. After all, these are all people who dropped over a thousand bucks (and that’s probably before wine pairings) on an evening at celebrity chef Slowik’s (an eerily godlike Ralph Fiennes) establishment Hawthorne, and not necessarily for a special occasion either.
Well, for all but one (plus the staff), it should be clarified. Arriving on a private island with Nicholas Hoult’s obnoxious Tyler, Margot (a searchingly enthralling Anya Taylor-Joy) seems to be the no-nonsense kind who calls bullshit when she sees it. She, a normie who’s nobody’s fool, certainly has not paid for the meal herself. After being surveyed during a rigorous check-in process, Margot proceeds into the spectacularly minimalist dining hall (erected by production designer Ethan Tobman with chilling precision) and shrugs off the privilege of eating at Hawthorne with, “It’s your money,” to a mortified Tyler. So what if she’s a last-minute replacement for Tyler’s Hawthorne-confirmed dinner date? She might as well enjoy this culinary excursion and live a little.
Enjoyment is hard to come by at Hawthorne, however, where Margot is surrounded by insufferable one-percenters, celebrities, mafia-types, a hard-to-impress food critic, and staff who can’t stop questioning Margot’s unexpected attendance. Margot’s date gets scolded for taking a photo of the presented plates—it’s against the rules, you see. And every meal comes with a pre-lecture about the locally raised and grown ingredients as well as the emotional past experiences that inspired the flavors. These early scenes are genuinely funny and well observed about the hysterical rituals of the upper-crust, so clueless about the bounds of their licenses that they can’t even sniff the hostility of Elsa (a terrifically icy Hong Chau) as tensions in the dining room rise with twists that spill out, course by ridiculous course.
Instead of spelling out the salty turns and sour reveals that Chef Slowik’s exclusive menu dishes out, let’s just say that it’s the rich that get served up (in various ways) in The Menu, once the script—tightly but frothily penned Seth Reiss and Will Tracy—spills some blood on the kitchen floor. In the end, what we have is a tired cook: once overjoyed by foods both simple and adventurous, but painfully uninspired and angry nowadays, with his craft hijacked by those rich enough to afford it, but not sensitive enough to truly appreciate it.
A lot of credit goes to Peter Deming’s très chic cinematography, which makes genuine use of the film’s one-location setting, dialing up the class tension via studious framing choices under Mylod’s baton. The script also finds inventive avenues to amplify the stakes despite the by-design limits of the uncluttered The Menu. At one point, guests disperse out to the island’s grounds like headless chickens as ordered by Slowik. At another, Margot tries to find a way out of this madness to which she increasingly doesn’t belong as someone who’s long since earned the resourceful, problem-solving head on her shoulders. Briefly, we also meet a law enforcement intruder as part of a well-played scene, through which Reiss and Tracy summon a hilarious sense of exasperation.
It’s tempting to compare the pleasurable aromas of The Menu to that of Knives Out or Triangle Of Sadness, two recent movies that superbly satirize the detached and incompetent upper class. But don’t be surprised if The Menu’s aftertaste feels more like the warm and fuzzy hug of Ratatouille. Like that Pixar delicacy, Mylod’s stew saves its most mouth-watering plate for the last. That’s why it’s fiendishly delightful.
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At another, Margot tries to find a way out of this madness to which she increasingly doesn’t belong as someone who’s long since earned the resourceful, problem-solving head on her shoulders.Tip: when you realize you want your sentence to have another clause, you don’t have to tack it onto the end! You can rewrite the whole thing – maybe even write more than one sentence!
The trailer for this looked intriguing, mind you I was also looking forward to Knives Out based on the promotion that ended up not so superbly wasting my time.Like Jamie Lee Curtis borrowing money from her dad which she used to start a successful business and then pay him back. Good job there showing how detached and incompetent she was, just like Jeff Bezos with that one.PS:The son could have sat around doing nothing but collect a paycheck but he got a Netflix deal lined up for his father’s book, that’s kind of proactive (not to mention the opposite of incompetent) and potentially lucrative even if it’s only three seasons, isn’t it?
The comparison to Knives Out is interesting to me, because I clearly didn’t experience it as a rah-rah-eat-the-rich fest like so many others. The family is like any other—it’s got more obnoxious people and less obnoxious, people who feel smug about their political views without having them tested—and for as much as the money definitely stirs their worst impulses, the film also doesn’t shy away from demonstrating that Christopher Plummer’s character has a huge responsibility in causing his kids to be spoiled brats, and deals with it in a petulant, self-aggrandizing way. Boiling it down to “the rich are terrible” I think robs the film of the great work it does in providing rich characterizations for the family, even as you’re pretty happy they end up on the street at the end (plus, if it’s really about how shitty rich people are, then Ana de Armas’ character is doomed to repeat it.)From the reviews (and the fact that it involves cooking people) The Menu definitely sounds more pointed and over-the-top than Knives Out, but I suppose that’s sort of the point.
Is she destined to become a terrible rich person? The film does establish the family didn’t exactly come from nothing like her and all that.
Not really. People just glom onto any chance to suggest the rich are the cause of all problems in society.
I absolutely hated Knives Out for the I’m More Clever Than You Are vibe (and the main lead having no real agency), but I respect your interpretation. The family part of Knives Out had potential, but I just cannot get past the feeling that Rian Johnson is out to assert his superior intellect as his primary goal (an interesting story is secondary. It doesn’t help that my dad simply will not accept my distaste for RJ).
What we do in the Shadows handled this issue more sensitively this season with Nadja’s vampire nightclub where she especially loved drinking the blood of drunk rich people, which she compared to veal
why the hell do you thing anyone needs to be “sensitive” when skewering the rich and priveleged?
LOL
Read the script for this a while back when I found it online on the Blacklist. It read very well and it really seems like they nailed casting. Looking forward to seeing it.
Nick Holt leaning into smarmy douchey asshole parts has been the Tony Stonem epilogue I never knew I needed.
His roles in The Favourite, The Great, and The Menu all seem like variations on a theme (not that I’m complaining, he’s fantastic in the first two).
They are all distinct, though
Huzzah!
I won’t claim any of this is bad, but I will say nothing about this looks appealing to me, aside from ATJ in that dress.
A dress? Is that what it’s meant to be? Having said that, she was wearing far less fabric on Graham Norton’s show last week.
Whether intentional or not, her choice of attire in that talk show has sure brought out the prudes into the conversation.Can’t wait to see what she wears as Furiosa.
That’s probably fair, but what do you expect from a mid-50s dad with two daughters around Anya’s age?
Some self-examination, maybe.
I think a lot of people who only know ATJ from The Queen’s Gambit are gonna be surprised and/or shocked at some of the other stuff she’s done. Have you seen The Northman? or Split? And I think she’s doing that on purpose, the taking of risque roles.I’m old and was very impressed with The Queen’s Gambit but found The VVitch very boring, but ATJ is talented and multi-lingual, beautiful if a bit too skinny IMHO. She’s on Instagram but I have no idea what girls think of her.
“searchingly enthralling?” Get a load of the creative writing major over here.
“Squandering hundreds of dollars on a dime-sized portion of deconstructed and deglazed huckleberry foam (I don’t actually know whether this is a thing, I just made it up)”If it wasn’t real before, it will be now.
Squandering hundreds of dollars on a dime-sized portionI realize this is peanuts by fine dining standards but a few years ago my wife and I went to a five-star hotel for our anniversary and booked into their fanciest restaurant. We agreed to order whatever we wanted, regardless of price. She had a $250 seafood platter that came on two levels and was enough food for three people. I chose the priciest steak on the menu – they had three, for $80, $120, and $180 respectively –and when it arrived, it almost broke my heart. It was *maybe* the size of a deck of cards, and had a tablespoon of mashed potatoes artfully smeared down the side of the plate, with an eyebrow’s worth of arugula as a salad. Had I wanted to, I could’ve eaten it in two bites, but instead of course I took stamp-sized bites and chewed each into paste before swallowing. Admittedly, it was delicious, but I needed a cheeseburger for dessert.
I went to Coi in San Francisco, $1000 for the two of us, ate almost nothing but got shitfaced, threw up some kinda purple foam outside the restaurant, disgusting, went to Taco Bell for two bean burritos, then saw Cakes the Killa at a rowdy club, I was out of my mind.
Fuuuuuuck that
You… would likely enjoy this film.
Who were the mafia types in the movie?I really liked the movie. People were laughing out loud in the theater.
Reminded me of Pig more than White Lotus.
On the way out of the theater I said it was like that one scene in Pig where Cage deconstructs that one chef was embellished and made an entire movie.
Like some other folks here, I read the script for this and can’t wait for this movie. This film seems to scratch an itch if you find these folks insufferable.
Triangle of Sadness had literally zero insightful commentary aside from capitalism is bad, which like we know, now give us something to think about (it did have a great performance from a gone too soon Charlbi Dean).Hope this is better.
Yeah, I don’t get the praise for Triangle of Sadness. So I was miffed that it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but at the same time not at all surprised it won the top prize there.
IMO, the commentary on wealth in The Menu is not really that interesting. It’s all very generic. But the commentary on obsession and analysis of art (erm food) destroying the magic is fresh. I wish the movie had leaned harder into this and less with the cheap shots at the rich/ had a more coherent critique, but it was still fun.
Just saw The Menu, and agreed. This movie actually would have been better I think without the absurd aspects (the murders etc). It would have worked really well just skewering the absurdity of foodie culture as it is.
Good news for food lovers
Kinda loved this one. For a while it looked like the real-worldy flipside of La La Land, where the guy tries to impress his date with the sheer depth of his dorky interest in this niche bit of obsessives-only art that nobody outside of the niche gives a shit about, except here he just keeps failing to impress her, as one would expect.
I was thinking this reminded me a bit of Ready or Not from the trailer, with a young woman brought into high society by her partner that ends up having to fight for her life.
On a related note, I started rewatching the Hannibal series streaming. I was always impressed by how the lavish cooking scenes made people-eating look really delicious.
The making-of features in the Hannibal DVDs with their culinary consultants are great. Long pig never looked so tasty!
How does it taste?Depends on the people.
Just saw it – pretty spot-on review. “…a searchingly enthralling Anya Taylor-Joy” really sums her up here. Every once and I while I think “is she over-hyped?”, then she’s on-screen and… nope. I mean, she’s holding her own with Voldemort here!
Minor spoiler:
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Most reviews seem to focus on the us/them | wealthy/not (and server/customer) aspect of the film, and of course, that’s front and center (us/them quite literally being a main plot point). After all, the filmmakers dipped toes in Succession. But IMHO The Menu’s most cathartic moment comes from its message about the satisfaction of cooking food to bring joy to the diner. Even if that moment was the result of a calculated ploy, it also felt like it had more than an ounce of sincerity. It reminded me a little of the end of Big Night where Stanley Tucci just makes eggs.
I got a real The French Laundry / Guy Fieri Food Truck vibe and that was unexpected.
or Ratatouille
Someone remarked to me that didn’t want to see this ‘cause it was obviously just more “eat the rich” and I said it was more “eat the food”.
Was real proud of myself for that take 😉
The rich will be with us always, we might as well eat them
Bones and All 😉
Yeah, I think the comparison to Succession really underlines how much The Menu’s class satire is just… okay. Succession is so sharp and spot-on while maintaining the strangest sort of empathy for all it’s characters. The Menu doesn’t quite get there and is most interesting when it’s looking at obsession, not class.
Seeing several Succession cast members in a similar visual style does not do The Menu any favors on the quality of the class satire.
Agreed, though to be fair, the film only has 90 or so minutes to flesh out characters. I love long-form TV now, and a lot of movies feel slight in comparison. Like The White Lotus gets to spend so much time in small moments and conversations and the characters’ personalities get peeled aways slowly like an onion.
Still, The Menu was entertaining as hell. Similar in a sense to Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, which was all carbs, but good times.
There was a lot to like about the movie, but I’m not sure the commentary ever quite came together. I felt like it took a bit too big of bite (pun definitely intended) in ways that didn’t quite seem in line with the “eat the rich” messaging.**SPOILER**Like even Hoult’s character, one who can break down the process of cooking to minute degrees (to the point of taking out the joy in cooking) is just as bad as the rich assholes who squander their wealth and throw around their power? Combine Hoult himself not being able to cook (despite his knowledge) and McTeer’s character and it felt more like a snipe against critics (a “what have you made?” type commentary) that isn’t really in line with the rest of the film and always comes off as a cheap and overly defensive.
I felt like they defused this by very amusingly showing how petty some of the decisions were, specifically with Leguizamo’s character “Dr. Sunshine” and his assistant who went to brown. Also someone else pointed out that McTeer’s character smokes, which we’ve been told already in the film fucks your palate, so they weren’t pretending she is a good critic or the only critic, she’s a bad critic. Cheap shots are critics are cheap, but they are a time honored tradition, see: Waiting for Godot
I really loved this movie. It wasn’t completely perfect of course, Hong Chau’s character’s motivation was ultimately thin, but kind of who cares, it was daffy and fund and foreboding, wonderfully acted, and Ralph Fiennes and ATJ were just perfect.
** SPOILER SPEAK **Saw the movie last night, and quite enjoyed it. The one thing I can’t help but think about, though: Was “Margo” stuck playing out the role expected of Tyler’s girlfriend (including being told Tyler knew how the night would end, as well as being requested to fetch the barrel, resulting in finding the radio)? Being able to fake a Coast Guard officer doesn’t seem like an ad-lib, so I can’t help but feel as though giving the customers a fleeting hope of salvation was always part of “the menu.” Plus, front-of-house lady suggested Slowik didn’t “forget” to have someone bring the barrel, suggesting yet another level of premeditation. While they made such a big deal about Margo being a last-second substitution, I don’t feel as though we know enough about the original date to know whether ATJ’s character was being given an “out,” or if the woman who chose not to attend with Tyler was similarly non-terrible. I was hoping the “tortilla” scene would have told us something about the ex.One of the reasons the film stuck with me is that I wonder how it would hold up on a second viewing. Judith Light’s character thinking Margo looked like their daughter, for instance, is far more innocent an observation until you know the back-story. Hers was the one character I felt genuinely sorry for, since she didn’t seem like a bad person, just one with too much money and not enough appreciation for it. (She also gets bonus points for encouraging Margo to leave at the end of the film, seemingly resigned to her fate.)
I also thought that moment from Light’s character was a nice touch.
One of my favorite bits of the film.
I absolutely loved this movie. Did it remind anyone else of The Last Supper?