- Starring
- Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult
- Director
- Mark Mylod
- Rating
- R
- Genre
- Comedy, Horror, Suspense, Thriller
- Release date
- November 18, 2022
- Where to watch
- HBO Max
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
Directed by Mark Mylod, who is best known for his work on television series such as Game of Thrones, Succession, and Entourage, The Menu is a psychological thriller starring Ralph Fiennes (No Time To Die, The Harry Potter films). Fiennes plays Julian Slowik, a renowned and reclusive chef who lives on a remote island that is home to his exclusive restaurant for the wealthy elite, and tonight he has a very special menu planned for them.
The Menu
While I will do my best, reviewing a thriller in any meaningful way without spoiling anything is a nearly impossible challenge, so please bear with me as I navigate the minefield. The first twenty minutes of The Menu are a perfect example of how to build tension in a film. Aided by pitch-perfect performances, all of the long quiet slightly eschew moments that movies like House of Darkness tried and failed to deliver, The Menu serves up with ease. It is these moments between, the unspoken and unidentified yet implicit threat, that drive The Menu’s narrative, and Hong Chau (The Whale, Downsizing), who plays Chef Slowik’s restaurant Captain, can be credited with much of this. She is wonderfully difficult to read, seamlessly transitioning from welcoming hostess to menacing acolyte and giving us brief tantalizing glimpses of what lies beneath the surface to chilling effect.
In a film in which what is unsaid is more important than what is, one of the standout performances are those given by Janet McTeer (Ozark) and Paul Adelstein (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), who plays Lillian and Ted, a hoity-toity restaurant critic and her disgustingly sycophantic editor. The chemistry between the two is wonderful, with each feeding off of the other in a decadent symbiosis. They fill the uncomfortable silences with even more uncomfortable banal elitism as she attempts to deduce the chef’s intentions just loudly enough to be heard by everyone but quietly enough to maintain the illusion of a private conversation.
While everyone holds their own in the film, Ralph Fiennes’s star shines the brightest. His portrayal of the serious and wounded Slowik is as offputting as it is magnetic, with Fiennes dancing on the edge of madness throughout. One moment, he’s menacing and the next he’s boiling over with vulnerability and despair, but throughout he commands your attention as easily as his Chef Slowik does his zealot-like kitchen staff.
Unfortunately, the movie flounders in the second act when the twist is revealed. It’s disturbing and potent, but it happens so early in the movie that the reactions of the potential victims don’t make sense. None of them believably try to escape or fight back in any meaningful way. There’s a scene in which it’s shown that escaping would be difficult but it seems insufficient to break all of them from trying again. All that was needed was a scene with someone trying to escape and finding out that the door was locked, or to have someone rush the “bad guys” only to be seriously injured or killed, to make it more believable that everyone just sits there and accepts their fate.
The Menu’s biggest problem is that only two of the restaurant guests are evil enough to come close to justifying what is planned for them but the movie seems to take the antagonist’s side which is that they all deserve death because of how their wealth makes the chef feel.
Finally, the very last shot is completely unearned and dumb.
Some of the performances are almost enough for us to add this to our Worth It selection but it ultimately just misses the mark.
WOKE ELEMENTS
- The entire premise of the film is that the wealthy elite are horrible and deserve death because of how they make Slowik feel about his “art.” As though his feelings are their responsibility. Unfortunately, since it is the film’s central idea, and it gets very preachy, we dinged it pretty hard for Wokeness. It really is the movie’s downfall. All of the early nuance is flushed in a single spectacle followed by an hour of masterfully performed expositional Lefist justifications.
- The movie pays lip service to the idea of the “noble prostitute.”
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
15 comments
Just a name
June 1, 2023 at 3:23 pm
I love that this website exists!
PLEASE never quit and continue with this!
I like that you are writing examples of what is woke and what not so people can see what they think.
I don’t think this movie is woke. I don’t think it’s all that great either.
If anything, it’s not “anti-capitalism” as much as it’s – the elites are out of touch with reality and pretend to be smarter than what they are. Also, the person that goes against the “capitlists” as you say, is presented as a bit of a nutjob and a villain-ish character, so he’s not supposed to be too sympathetic.
I’d put this in “woke-ish” so people can see the review at least and come to their own opinion.
Can’t put it as fully woke compared to some actually woke BS
Don
June 2, 2023 at 8:19 pm
Wrong, not woke
James Carrick
June 2, 2023 at 10:36 pm
Don, I love your passion. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
rodbates0322
July 31, 2024 at 10:26 am
I was thinking the same thing. I definitely don’t remember it being woke.
Pipi
June 10, 2023 at 9:39 pm
Tbe bible had a few noble prostitutes. Just sayin
James Carrick
June 11, 2023 at 10:40 am
The Bible never promoted prostitution as anything more than a sinful and soul-crushing practice. The Menu posits that it can be a rewarding service industry career.
number1marymagdalinefan
August 29, 2023 at 3:36 pm
how dare you talk about Mary like this Jesus would be ASHAMED they were BESTIES
phukwokies
May 5, 2024 at 9:26 pm
Love this site and the idea of it, but if I may offer a word of advice – You seem to focus quite a bit on the religious angle of wokeness and it’s attacks on Christianity, which is fine, as it’s most certainly a thing. But after reading a couple of reviews on films/shows that I’ve personally seen, it seems as though your hyper-focus on religious wokeness may have you missing moments of the two major woke go-tos: anti-white racism and misandry.
Keep up the good work, but just remember to look out for everyone, and all points of wokeness. Take care.
TrulyWoke
June 20, 2023 at 6:03 pm
Is there a reason why you bootlick the rich so much? Unless you’re the son of a billionaire or millionaire then you shouldn’t be getting mad at media pointing out that wealth inequality/wealth hoarding is a serious issue and that rich people are generally terrible.
James Carrick
June 20, 2023 at 6:50 pm
Any other talking points you’d like to regurgitate?
Gamelore
June 24, 2023 at 1:00 pm
I didn’t see any wokeness in that movie, period. Not only that, but there wasn’t even anything vaguely in that direction that showed up on my overly sensitive radar that breaks immersion on a pin drop. So perhaps this is an issue of definition.
Pete A.
August 31, 2023 at 1:45 am
This is a BIG miss… nothing about this movie was woke. Even if you call making fun of the rich “woke”, which I don’t agree with, you can’t honestly say that the writers wanted us to sympathize with the literal insane cannibal chef killer can you?? He was still the VILLAIN. Not the antihero, the VILLAIN.
James Carrick
August 31, 2023 at 3:51 am
He was definitely the villain, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t also supposed to be a sympathetic anti-hero by the end, one whose narrative was treated as true and righteous, even if his methods were not.
In all honesty, this was one of my earliest reviews, done before our scoring system was fully fleshed out. Were I to revisit it, I’d probably only mark it as Woke-ish.
As summer comes to an end and things start to slow down, I’ll likely take another look at some of my earliest reviews.
Mark
March 8, 2024 at 6:24 am
The film is definitely woke and Fiennes was definitely the anti-hero. We were supossed to be initially disgusted by his behaviour but then come around to it after his explanation. For those that disagree they must acknowledge the film promotes communist ideals even if not woke, the part that crosses it over into woke is the hypocrisy of the way these ideas are depicted. The chef is already an elite how can he possibly purport to be opressed.
The other woke part was that not all rich people are bad if you’re pretty and pretend to have sympathy with the opressed (the chef) then you’re one of the good guys. Its testament to the film that its still pretty good despite this nonsense shoved down our throats.
Ktuff_morning
July 12, 2024 at 11:56 pm
Leftist. As per usual you fanatics don’t know what Leftist even means and worse you don’t even bother to try to support the supposition. You’re just throwing out bile like a Christian. I liked the phrase banal elitism.
Why does any character in any movie “deserve” to be killed anyway? Who are you to say?
As William Munny said deserve’s got nothing to do with it. There’s no divine authority because God is not real, which makes your interpretation even measlier.