The Menu

“A young couple (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) travels to an exclusive island restaurant where the chef (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a pricey, lavish menu. But it soon becomes clear that the dinner guests are about to be served some shocking surprises in this dark comedy written by Seth Reiss & Will Tracy, and directed by Mark Mylod.”

From director Mark Mylod comes a film rich with satire, wit, and commentary on the ever-widening gap between the class systems of the super wealthy and all the rest of us. The Menu begins when a group of clearly well-to-do people board a boat that takes them to a private island where one of the most luxurious dining experiences and world renown chefs is located. Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), a captivating and meticulous host, caters each dining experience with a perfectly crafted menu that tells a story. Unfortunately for these dining guests, that story is going to take an unexpected turn.

While the trailer gives away a lot of the direction the film begins to go in, it’s no surprise that the evening takes a grim turn as each menu item forces the guests to take a look at their own lives while Chef Slowik tells them everything wrong with them and society, a society that has sucked the joy and life from him and his work. Not to give too much away that isn’t already spelled out in the trailers, there is much more to the story that unfolds, with an unexpected guest shows up, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) and throws the planned menu into chaos.

Although it can be quite easy to buy in to Chef’s point of view when it comes to punishing the worst of the worst, those who use money to buy themselves out of any type of consequences, there are also reasons he despises some of the guests that are so trivial it reminds us that his actions are in no way hold any type of nobility, but are just as flawed as those who are guilty. That’s the point of satire, I know, but just like in films such as God Bless America, where the protagonist goes on a killing spree targeting all those he judges to be deserving of such a fate, are we supposed to get some kind of satisfaction in watching this? Margot is supposed to be some kind of representation of goodness or even the only sane person in the film, but she doesn’t have enough grounding to make us think we’re not just watching something borderline sadistic. As much as I enjoyed the film on my initial viewing, the more I unpacked everything and thought about its different aspects the more I realized that the majority of it just didn’t land with me, strictly speaking story-wise and theme-wise.

The acting, however, is a different story. Ralph Fiennes is superb, with a stoic presence that you can see begin to unravel as the film progresses. Although as an audience we may not agree (or some psychopaths out there might) with his methods, reasonings and judgement of the party guests, one fascinating thing is that I saw the moment where I entirely believed why Ralph Fiennes did. His performance has that kind of power behind it. Anya Taylor-Joy has had quite a number of good years starring in some really high-quality films, and her performance here demonstrates why that is. The supporting cast is also very good, and it’s easy to get caught up in the story.

We were given a digital code to review this film, which is now available to purchase digitally. The physical copy comes out on 1/17/23 on Blu-ray, that contains a behind-the-scenes featurette and deleted scenes, with superior video and audio, something that cannot be accurately reviewed based on internet connections. While trying to review this on streaming, I was interrupted four times with some kind of buffering, despite having a 1 Gigabyte connection. I highly recommend waiting until the physical copy is released to ensure the most reliable and highest quality viewing of the film possible.