BEFORE: I'm sorry for messing with the timeline, I watched this movie in between "The Death of Dick Long" and "Everything Everywhere All at Once". Please forgive me, but my wife watched this movie without me one night while I was working at the theater and she said I just HAD to watch it, so she could discuss it with me. She didn't give anything away, and she knows I don't usually take recommendations (just as she doesn't usually take them from me, she just caught up last month on "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and "Captain America: Civil War") or if I do take a recommendation to put something on my list, it could take me up to TWO YEARS to get to it.
So, naturally, I said I'd get to it, put it on my list, but then, it is the hot movie that everyone seems to be talking about right now, so there's the risk of spoilers. AND we're heading into Oscar season, I've got a few 2022 movies coming up in January, but what if this becomes some kind of under-the-radar sleeper hit, just before the Oscar nom voting takes place? Seems like the theatrical and HBO Max release dates were chosen VERY carefully for this one - and you can't count out Ralph Fiennes, he's a terrific actor with two Oscar nominations, even if he somehow doesn't have a statue yet. You never know, this could be his year and it could be a partial reward for appearing in films like "The English Patient" and "Schindler's List".
So, I'm going to err on the side of caution here, and if I can squeeze one more film into an already full January, then I'm somehow a bit more prepared than I was before? Who knows, but let me at least get into that conversation with my wife about this film, and also get to the film before I see any spoilers. If I've planned this correctly, Ralph Fiennes carries over from "No Time to Die". I was going to go directly from that Bond film into tomorrow's action movie, via a different link, but then I realized this film could slip RIGHT in-between and connect with the chain on both ends, there's no need to shift anything around!
According to my cable box, this film's only available On Demand until January 20, so I have to watch it early on a rainy Thursday when I have nothing else to do, it's not my fault! Of course, if the film does well On Demand, then the cut-off of 1/20 will either be changed to some date in March or April, or will remain in place and refer to 1/20/24. The deadline is just a trick to get me to watch it sooner, I'm on to your tricks, HBO - but what if it's NOT a trick, I can't take that chance! Bastards.
THE PLOT: A young couple travels to a remote island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.
AFTER: OK, so maybe my wife's sense of urgency kind of acted as a bit of a spoiler in and of itself - she gave nothing away, but if she was excited about what she saw in this movie, then there must be something THERE, right? And everyone else is talking about this, too, so what is the deal? What's going to happen? I was on edge right from the start. These 12 guests (an actor, a restaurant critic, three business executives, a foodie, two regulars...) have paid top dollar to be ferried over to a remote island, they get a tour of the property, the smokehouse, the kitchen staff's quarters, the beach where the scallops are harvested, while their tour guide talks about the island's biome and how the menu is created based on the amazing produce of the island's waters, pastures and such. All seems pretty legit and high-end, but honestly, we're just waiting for the other shoe to drop, right? Is this going to be a "Gilligan's Island" situation where they get marooned or more of a "Fantasy Island" where they're all shown the error of their ways? Time went on and after seeing the cult-like devotion of the kitchen staff, I started thinking more about "Midsommer", and then after the introduction of the chef, I started thinking about "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Perhaps this chef is Willy Wonka, who (also like Mr. Roarke) sought out terrible people to come to his location, offering them something they wanted but with the full intention of torturing them to try to break them of their bad habits and bratty nature.
I don't think I was far wrong, it just became a question of what, exactly, the diners were in for here, and how soon they would come to realize it. But this is all based on the cult of personality that forms around a top-level, super-famous chef, and we've all seen this IRL to some degree, right? For a few years now, chefs have become the new celebrities, like rock stars or actors. Some have built multi-million dollar empires of chain restaurants, some are also famous for being on television (Gordon Ramsay), and others got so full of themselves that they felt they could break the law and get away with it (Mario Batali). Lawsuits and cancel culture have revealed some of them to be garbage humans, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement winnowed out others, and the pandemic made things difficult for all chefs and restaurant owners - but that's no guarantee that the ones left standing after COVID are all wonderful humans.
Together, my wife and I watch WAY too many cooking shows, like almost all of the competitions - "Top Chef", "Hell's Kitchen", "MasterChef", "Worst Cooks in America", "Halloween Baking Championship", "Spring Baking Championship", "Holiday Baking Championship" - OK, there are probably more out there, but we had to draw the line somewhere. She got bored with "Chopped" but I still have two years worth of episodes on the DVR and I'm trying to chip away at them. I feel like I could go get a job at the Food Network, I've seen so many of their shows. What I don't understand is how they find 18 new contestants every year to be on "Hell's Kitchen", I mean who signs up for a show where their shortcomings and mistakes are going to be on TV for everyone to see, and the star of the show has a vested interest in making them look bad, because that makes him look good, and that adds to his cult of personality. Yes, sure, one of them's going to win a "job" as head chef in one of his restaurants, but the odds are 17-to-1 against it being them. Can they still go back to their old restaurant job after not cooking scallops to Gordon Ramsay's standards, or are they done in the industry? Whoops, no time to worry about that, because a new season of the show starts filming next month.
Still I have to believe that "The Menu" is exaggerated, and not meant to be taken seriously. If a chef invited 12 people to his remote island estate with the intention of harming them, well, he's not going to get a lot of repeat customers, is he? But then why does he forbid them to take pictures of the food and the restaurant - he has heard of social media, right? And "Don't eat it till you tweet it?" How's he going to further his reputation if he doesn't let his customers post? Ah, but there's the air of mystery, what really goes on in this restaurant, this exclusive one-of-a-kind tasting menu that has seven courses and takes three hours to serve? This is a riff on the French Laundry, where the tasting menu takes 3 or 4 hours to serve, and costs $350 per person, minimum, not counting wine, I'll bet.
Without giving too much away, there are reasons why THESE 12 people were invited to this event, and when one of the guests has been replaced by another person, well the chef wants to know what happened to her, why isn't she there? Hmm, why is this important, and why is the chef upset that the original guest isn't there? There are rules against this sort of thing happening, as the menu has been specifically tailored for those guests. They're really aiming to serve, as they said in the movie "Big Night" a meal so delicious that right afterwards, you might as well kill yourself, because you won't ever taste anything as delicious. Come to think of it, we also offer condemned prisoners the right to choose whatever they want for their last meal. If you ever find yourself on Death Row, and you need to choose your last meal, maybe consider asking for the tasting from the French Laundry, it's just a thought - it would save you all the trouble of getting a reservation there, plus there's a month-long wait for reservations, so maybe this way you get another month before the execution.
Without saying too much here (and this will be difficult), celebrity chef Julian Slowik has risen to the top of his field, but that came at a price - he's lost his passion for his craft somehow, and he blames the guests, who have all either contributed to his situation, or they make a living off of exploiting other people. They're rich assholes, in other words - who else could afford to drop over $1200 for a restaurant meal? OK, they're all guilty of something, but aren't we all? By the third course we realize that he's not interested in really feeding them something uniquely extravagant (umm, which he does do, so mixed messages...) but he's much more fascinated with exposing their secrets and making them realize who they all are, deep down. As for the food, which they are instructed to not "eat", but instead to savor, enjoy and relish, it's all going to turn out to be not enough, yet still more than they deserve.
So this puts me in a delicate position here, because a lot of this is SO over-the-top, so unbelievable, so "this could never happen, not like this" that I'm declined to dismiss a lot of this. Slowik makes some good points about bad people, but it's hard to imagine somebody so damaged that he decided to find a way to take all that talent he has for cooking delicious, unique, extravagant food and turn it all into one giant mind-fuck vehicle for vicious revenge. When most people are burned out, they just take a vacation or if they've got the money, maybe a year off to recharge their batteries or re-think their business plan. Jesus, get a pet, get a hobby, start a new relationship or something, this plan of his seems quite a bit too extreme. But then, on the other hand, isn't this what a movie is supposed to do, show us something that we can't see in real life, like an intergalactic war or a zoo full of talking animals or the zombie apocalypse?
I can't take this seriously in the end, but perhaps I'm not supposed to. There are messages here about the cult of celebrity, the extravagance of indulgence at fancy restaurants, the ways that terrible people are terrible to each other, and how that leads to damaged people who want to damage others. Rich assholes get what's coming to them, but is that enough? And if it is, should it be? I'm really torn over this. Completely ridiculous at the end, almost farcical, but even in that, can we find a moral that maybe means something to us?
I want to get personal again before signing off, if I may. In the before times, when I did have a bit of extra money I would indulge in beer dinners, which was a set tasting menu served at various restaurants around Manhattan, most of which are no longer operating. I was a regular at the Rock Center Cafe, which was adjacent to the Rockefeller Center skating rink, and hosted beer dinners about 10 or 12 times a year, for about a decade. That's a lot of dinners, and I rarely missed them - I'd go with one or two friends or occasionally more, and they were usually priced between $40 and $55, for that each diner would get four courses of food, paired with four beer samples, usually from the same brewery, but not always. The value of the meal was often greater than the cost, it was normally a high-end menu and the price was kept low because the beers came from a brewery or distributor that wanted to pitch their beers to fans, and as for the food, well, everyone was getting the same menu, so that no doubt made things easier for the kitchen to plan and prepare. Service was faster than usual, because everyone was eating the same thing, and after the beer rep described each beer, and the chef talked about why THIS beer was paired with THIS food, it was on with the next course.
Time went on and I found another restaurant hosting these dinners, the Manchester Pub, which is also no longer operating. I was dining with my friend Victoria there and no lie, the kitchen caught on fire - most beer dinners were pre-paid, but THIS place charged us after, so after the fire trucks showed up and we headed to get food elsewhere, we realized we'd had two plates of food and two beers for free. Still, I really miss these dinners, and I hope they come back eventually. The last beer dinner I had before the COVID shut-down was a winter-themed dinner hosted by the Coney Island Brewing Company, and it was held in a Manhattan hotel that had fake "ski cabins" that contained our dining tables. It was a great night out, nobody knew that a year of closed restaurants was on the horizon - just today, three years later, I saw that there are beer dinners scheduled for January and February at (wait for it...) the Coney Island Brewing Company. I'm excited, but it's a LONG subway ride out to Coney Island, so I don't think I can make it - and the February dinner is $65 and features beers paired with aphrodisiac foods like oysters and chocolate, so it's probably not appropriate for me to attend with a close friend. Maybe I can head out there in March, once there's less chance of bad weather. Money's a bit tight right now, anyway - but the good news is, at least I'm not a rich asshole!
Also starring Anya Taylor-Joy (last seen in "Last Night in Soho"), Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "Equals"), Hong Chau (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Janet McTeer (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Paul Adelstein (last seen in "The Phenom"), John Leguizamo (last heard in "Encanto"), Aimee Carrero (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"), Reed Birney (last seen in "The Hunt"), Judith Light (last seen in "Tick...Tick...Boom!"), Rebecca Koon (last seen in "Finding Steve McQueen"), Rob Yang (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Arturo Castro (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Mark St. Cyr (last seen in "Marshall"), Peter Grosz (last seen in "Here Today"), Christina Brucato (last seen in "The Intern"), Adam Aalderks, Matthew Cornwell (last seen in "The Tomorrow War").
RATING: 8 out of 10 raw local oysters in a mignonette emulsion, served with lemon caviar and an oyster leaf
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