Haute cuisine — the worst, right? Minuscule portions, inscrutable foams, and spheres scattered across gigantic plates festooned with equally baffling smears and powders, prices not to be looked upon by those with documented cardiac conditions. Worst of all is the pomposity, the highfalutin puffing-up of dinner from a source of sustenance and joy into a dense text meant to be pondered, analyzed, and described more than savored. Molecular gastronomy uses science to remove the humanity from food. Pretentious twaddle! Who needs it!
That’s the heartily espoused viewpoint of “The Menu,” a cuttlefish-ink-black horror-comedy written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy (comedy guys who cut their teeth on The Onion’s video content), directed by Mark Mylod (a go-to TV helmer most recently flourishing on “Succession”), and most significantly, produced by Adam McKay. The self-appointed satirist laureate of Hollywood bestows his blunt-force contempt for the upper crust on this exercise in class conflict, and as in “The Big Short,” “Vice,” and especially “Don’t Look Up,” the critiques are defanged by self-satisfied generalizations that rely on one-dimensional, easy-to-hate opponents.
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The McKayvian (McKayesque?) touch comes through more perceptibly in the distaste for everyone except the condescending ideal of a “normal” person. On the remote island housing the twelve-seat temple to gustation known as Hawthorne, the elite patrons embody every flavor of asshole while the staff models the haughtiness and intellectual gasbaggery of insufferable artistes. The only one leaving a positive Yelp review for this supper club from hell is the undercover member of the underclass, her saving grace being the patronizing link between her socioeconomic status and her proudly unsophisticated palate.
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We’re not really talking about food here, but art, another system dependent on benefactors and buzz. That’s certainly how chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes, doing M. Gustave of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” as if he’d studied under Jigsaw from “Saw” at culinary school) thinks of himself, droning on in ornate yet scantly funny monologues about the lofty symbolic significance to each cube of protein and sprig of herbs. Whereas twerpy foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) literally eats this stuff up, his companion Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) isn’t having it. She’s not into the dots of melon-flavored paste, but in a discerning common-sense way, not in the boorish ingrate way of the other diners.
At least that’s the dissonance Mylod and the writers expect us to swallow due to the fact that smalltown gal Margot doesn’t belong with the assortment of bourgeois archetypes that includes finance bros (Arturo Castro, Rob Yang and Mark St. Cyr), a pair of embittered spouses (Judith Light and Reed Birney), a movie star (John Leguizamo) and his assistant (Aimee Carrero), and a tyrannical critic. That last one, ultimately shamed for her reviews that put restaurants out of business even though she’s just doing her job, gives away the undercooked resentments of the critique served as the main course.
None of them respect the mouthwatering morsels painstakingly prepared for them, each guilty of their own sins graver than sending things back, asking for substitutions, or snapping photos for the ‘gram instead of being present in the meal. Slowik hates them, as is his right, though he’s The ominous atmosphere, slathered on like so much Sweet Baby Ray’s, announces from the earliest scenes that this collection of wretches is more likely to leave the table in a doggy bag than holding one. Everyone’s got their dirty little secrets, but the real twist concerns one character’s concealed identity, though its unveiling only turns this person from one cliché into another. Though the film hits its target in the notion that rich people have a far more expensive version of the same bad taste as anyone else — look at Trump gobbling his well-done steaks with ketchup or the disinterest the Roy family of “Succession” has in the lavish feasts carted out for their picking — it’s only treated as a virtue in Margot’s case.
As anyone actually in the American heartland already knows, blue-collar workers are perfectly capable of appreciating the nuances in a halo of charred rice or an Ingmar Bergman picture. The conflation of humble origins with both an unrefined sensibility and moral decency makes this film look just as superior and deluded as the demographic it’s trying to fillet (or skewer, or roast, whichever epicurean metaphor strikes your fancy). A few of the bids for laughs cut the mustard, such as a sight gag with toasted tortillas and a running joke about an execrable family comedy that sticks to Leguizamo’s character like the smell of fryer oil. Far more frequently, the jabs at these captive gourmands and their vainglorious host have little more to offer than their arch smugness. Everything on the menu of “The Menu” looks good enough, but once its moldy tirade against the one percent has been fully dished out, it’s plain to see there’s not a whole lot of meat on the bone here. [C+]
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