By guest contributor Darren Gaskell
Enthusiastic food fanatic Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) invites Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) on a trip to a once in a lifetime dining experience on a remote island at an exclusive restaurant called Hawthorne, where superstar head chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a multi-stage menu full of surprises and an overarching theme which will reveal itself over the course of the evening.
If the viewer were treated to 106 minutes of mouth-watering shots of molecular gastronomy and sent home with an envy of the type of folks who can pay well over a thousand dollars a head for a meal leaving them feeling just about full enough, there would be a case for calling Searchlight Pictures and asking if their movie could be sent back.
Of course, there’s an instant flavour that signals something is off, further enhanced when the full roster of guests is introduced, including brackish food critic Lillian Bloom (Janet McTeer) and her toadying editor Ted (Paul Adelstein), a movie star (John Leguizamo) clinging on to his last shred of relevance and three belligerent, braying business bros who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
To go into too much detail about what happens next would be to ruin many of the delicious moments served up by Mark Mylod’s movie, but a mere glance at the quality of the cast from soup to nuts should give more than a whiff of the darkly comic fun you’ll have with this as a bunch of awful, entitled folks are given an unexpected side order of harsh lessons – even as they’re presented with some of the most achingly beautiful creations ever to end up as human waste.
As you’d expect, Fiennes and Taylor-Joy are on (Michelin) star form here and their fully loaded confrontations burst with delight, but the movie is stolen by the amazing Hong Chau as the practical, unflappable Elsa, dishing out blunt, hilarious one liners to anyone who gets ideas above their station, in particular the aforementioned business bros. You will come to adore Elsa within seconds of meeting her, I guarantee it.
Leguizamo is, as ever, perfect at sending himself up in a performance with a complete lack of pretence and, along with Judith Light’s long suffering Anne and Aimee Carrero’s uncommonly patient, yet felonious, Felicity, capture at least some essence of sympathy in a melange of mortal dreadfulness.
Seth Reiss and Will Tracy’s screenplay cooks up its tensions with a “chuck everything into one pot” approach and the underlying notes of class war cry out for far more finesse, but the escalating nightmare is confidently handled, even when Slowik’s backstory is dropped into the proceedings with all the subtlety of a plate hitting the floor. Still, when the main event is this tasty, there’s much I’ll forgive.
A psychological horror comedy than leans into the horror just enough not to put off the folks who will look at the poster and think “Ooh, that Ralph Fiennes is in this, I like him”, The Menu is fully aware of which side its bread is buttered. This may frustrate hardcore gore gourmands who like their fare more gnarly and bloody but in this case less is certainly more, allowing the queasy humour to dominate rather than wallowing in offal.
Purists may point out that The Menu is neither fish nor fowl as it attempts to please those hungry for social commentary as well as others who are just there for a fast food night out at the flicks, but it does manage to operate on a level which allows for several “eat the rich” barbs without alienating those who don’t fancy sitting down to a lecture about the 1%.
Skewering foodie culture and obscene, disposable wealth without giving you the feeling that Ken Loach is on your shoulder making you feel suicidally terrible about absolutely everything that might give you the tiniest smidgen of joy in life, The Menu is suitably appetising without giving you indigestion. And oh! That cheeseburger. Yeah, it’s a tiny spoiler, but prepare to drool.