Catch-Up Watch: The Menu (2022)

Watched:  08/08/2026

Format:  Library DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Mylod

While watching The Menu (2022), I kept thinking - this is a movie that wants to be a "fuck the rich" movie, but doesn't seem to want to actually say what the problem is.  

For all it's aspirations, the movie only occasionally rises above any other flick where people are held hostage with increasing horrors inflicted upon them.  It has lofty goals as a social commentary, of making poetic commentary about food and nourishment and art - And you've likely seen better.  It's stylish and sets itself up as comment upon the exploitation and pretentions of the elite, but then has nothing to say about it beyond a college freshman ranting in their dorm room.  Nor does it turn the lens back on those inflicting the damage - the cult-like crew of Ralph Fiennes' kitchen who have happily gone along with the plan that drives the movie, who had to know what they were signing up for if they wanted to work in Michelin star restaurants. 

Which is a shame.  This is top-flight talent stacked up in front of the camera. And I think, whether I think the movie is successful or not, they did great with what they had.  Which isn't a lot - the supporting characters don't get enough time to give us more than a glance at them and their worst qualities so we know they deserve what's coming and we can feel fine about it if things happen to them.  

After all, they are rich and are having a good time enjoying something we can't afford and barely understand.

But, yeah, Anya Taylor-Joy reminds the audience she can absolutely lead a movie, Nicholas Hoult nails the weirdness of the sycophantic foodie/ obsessive, John Leguizamo probably understands the actor with an iffy catalog pondering his next direction a whole lot, and I've never actually seen Ralph Fiennes be anything less than stellar.  And, if I'm being honest, I watched the movie 95% just because of Fiennes and the fact I don't get to enough of his stuff.  Heck, Judith Light, who seems better than ever the last decade, kills it with a quiet, tortured take on her role.

The set design is a choice makes sense.  A brutalistic bunker of a restaurant where the walls and floors are spare concrete (yet this place has no echoes) and a single window looks out upon the sea.  Split in two, one side is the dining room, the other the kitchen, where diners are invited to watch the chefs in action.  It feels *likely* for this sort of thing, where the focus is food and reinforcing the notion that all of it came from the island.

A single door down a long hall, attached, leads to the one entrance, in or out (fire safety laws be damned - we have purees to plate!)

It's convenient for... everything.  And a bit clever.  I just wish I felt they did more with the cinematography.

There are three sequences in the film that feel like they're the product of producers notes.  

• Chasing all the men around the island, which goes nowhere but feels very of-the-moment in 2020
• A full brawl between our lead (Margot/ Erin) and the showrunner/ hostess, which has no ramifications despite one of them dying
• Margot finding a picture of our chef as a happy young guy making a cheeseburger (will it play in later?  WHO CAN SAY?)

It's times like this - that feel for the most part like wasted time on screen - that I felt there was probably a *great* movie hiding under this very okay movie.  

The odd thing about Hollywood making movies about the follies of the rich is that the people approving all of these productions, who make lots of money making them, are the people these movies are supposed to be commenting upon.  Which is maybe why there's so little in the film about the specifics of why the rich are so burdensome to Chef.   We know that these people take - but we're also told that the diners are *secretly* criminal and liars.  But as we know, one need not lie nor commit a crime to take from others.  

And why is it a revelation to the kitchen staff in the fanciest restaurant in America that rich people don't live like normies?  Why have the people who are willing to pay for what they're making so vile to them that they decide to kill them?  Maybe especially why kill the finance bros who've never been there before?

As a result of the wobbly reasoning, the actual meaning of food (in a movie about food) barely even registers as the metaphor the movie wants to declare.  The movie keep asking "what is food?" and comes up with... nothing.  If it is nourishment - nourishment of what?  If it is art, what is it saying and why are we having the theatrics?

And if food should have meaning, don't the Finance Bros have meals that once brought them joy?  Kraft Mac n' Cheese?  What is the joy in cooking for others? Trying to connect the narrative lines about the chef losing his love of cooking and treating Margot's sneaky way out becomes a cheat code instead of having anything to say about anything.

And yet the movie insists over and over it's saying plenty.  But rather than being about "those who give and those who take", it seems more about how someone's own clientele annoy someone so badly that the chef decides to form a mass murder/suicide pact.  

It feels like there's the bones of something as unsettling as a Midsommar here, but maybe with more of a social point that would have landed like crazy in 2022, and instead it just feels like one part torture porn (my least favorite horror genre), one part a swing at satire that goes nowhere, and one part Ratatouille.   

And there are great movies about food I've seen, and plenty I have not.  For the polar opposite of this film, check out Babette's Feast.  For a movie that plays in the same arena, put on your big boy movie pants and try The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.  

Now, I'm making it sound like I hated this movie.  I didn't.  I just had the deep frustration of feeling like this movie was so close to being really good.  Or, you know, maybe great (in my book.  Some of y'all loved it, and respect).  But I genuinely liked everyone in it, and didn't turn it off, so that's something, I think.  It kept me wanting to see the end, which was actually a mix of really funny and a bit disappointing.  

Anyway.  I watched it at long last.