#MovieReview: The Menu serves retribution on a high-cuisine platter

The Menu is a mostly enjoyable thriller/satire which writes itself into a corner for a disappointing third act.

It is yet another entry into the ‘eat the rich’ social satire which has dominated satirical movies in recent years, alongside Don’t Look Up and Triangle of Sadness.

This is, of course, a fair group of people to pillory and satirise given the modern dystopia many people find themselves in globally, often directly as a result of billionaires trying to scrape an extra buck.

Accompanying the uber-wealthy themselves, are the layers of pretension that can be found across all of the industries that cater to them, whether it is the high art world, modern fashion or as in The Menu, high cuisine.

It is probably fair to think that some of these people are out of touch, spending thousands of dollars on dishes made up of things such as deconstructed, artisanally sourced, organic forest-foraged umami-packed moss emulsion.

There are many thousands of restaurants pushing the limits of cuisine for the right reasons of course, but there are certainly some designed for Instagram influencers and the nouveau riche who couldn’t tell pork from a parsnip.

The Menu is mostly successful in locating its target, but does not know where to take its interesting premise in the denouement.

Spoilers to follow

The Menu follows a varied group of restaurant-goers who attend the exclusive Hawthorn restaurant which sits on a private island and is run by exacting celebrity head-chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes).

The group is a seemingly disparate bunch of well-heeled foodies, but as the film progresses, links between them slowly start to appear.

Shot mostly in the open-plan restaurant kitchen and dining room, the premise sets up Hitchcockian tension, with a puzzle that begins to unravel from the halfway point.

Something is clearly amiss inside Hawthorn and The Menu does an excellent job of hooking you in to wait for the next piece to fall into place.

It also does a good job of identifying the infrastructure that supports the notion of a celebrity chef, including a food critic and the regular clientele who cannot remember a single previous dish.

The film is smart to joke at the expense of both the chef and the patrons, leaving the audience ready to see retribution through the eyes of the one ‘pure’ character, Margot Mills (Anya Taylor-Joy).

Moving swiftly through its set-up, The Menu loses some momentum in the last half-hour, but is ultimately a fun watch.

Rated 18 for scenes of strong violence and language.
3.5/5.

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