This movie takes the term “biting satire” to a whole new level!
SYNOPSIS: A couple travels to a coastal island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.
Without a doubt, the best thing about this movie is just how much it commits to the bit in terms of the concept and the execution. The way the extravagant setting of a high class restaurant is incorporated into every aspect of this story is very well thought out. The horror, the humor, and even the act structure is defined by the overarching concept of this movie, and it never shies away from that no matter how absurd things get.
Ralph Fiennes gives a wonderfully commanding performance as the Head Chef Slowik here. Everytime his character gave a monologue he exuded an undeniable onscreen presence that was very ominous, and effortlessly threatening. Anya Taylor-Joy gives a great performance as well, her dynamic with Fiennes definitely floats the weight of this movie's story to new heights, but I felt as if her dynamic with Nicholas Hoult, who is also really good, was underutilized.
Something this movie does with its characters that’s very interesting is that they never really come together as a whole. We have an entire ensemble of high-class guests at this restaurant, and the different tables that are setup rarely interact with other tables. In this way, we have about a half-dozen different stories all playing out at once in the first act, until things come together around act two. Even then though, all of our characters feel extremely distant from one another, so I never found myself extremely invested in any of them aside from Anya Taylor Joy’s character.
Similar to this year's Triangle of Sadness, this movie pokes fun at the ultra-rich, but it also has a lot of commentary about art and art-critics alike. The film’s script gets a little lopsided in its balancing act of making fun of both of these groups, and it definitely hits harder in terms of overall execution when it makes fun of them at the same time. There were a lot of very clever moments and throughlines that brought our characters into “The Menu” as Ralph Fiennes repeatedly states that incorporated a lot of very fun and intense scenes throughout the movie.
There are different scenes in the movie that feel like they occur solely for the purpose of having one character say a line of exposition, and at times the exposition comes off as a little heavy-handed. Given that the movie is labeled as a sort of suspense-thriller, there are definitely moments of horror that feel a little contrived here and there, without the weight of the typical R-rated movie violence that this definitely was lacking.
With movies where a group of people is invited to a remote location where something is bound to go wrong (yes, it happens more than you think), there’s usually a moment where the tide breaks and everyone realizes the situation they’ve become a part of. Here, there never really is a moment where that occurs. Characters witness something, and they’re not really sure whether it was “staged” or not, and then just seem to carry on. I think part of this lack of mass hysteria is the separation of this group into sections that never really interact with one another, which I suppose was intentional, but I felt as if the characters were just effortlessly “locked in” to this situation, and this lack of urgency of escape is even brought up by Fiennes at one point.
Overall, The Menu is really fun. Fiennes and Taylor-Joy both give great performances respectively, and the rest of the cast of characters is mild enough to keep this movie interesting. If you’re looking for a fun thriller to watch, a la carte, this movie is just that, but it does offer some things beneath the surface enough to sink your teeth into.
3/5
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