The Menu (2022) Is Delicious
Certainly a top ten of my favorites for the year, The Menu is a tense and hilarious dark comedy that serves to unsettle alongside making you chuckle. Its one of those films that starts out with everything quite formal and as it runs through a variety of courses, things become more sinister.
The film is an excellent deconstruction of the artist, with Ralph Fiennes (he/him) serving us as Chef Slowik with a variety of courses that mock some restaurants that base their prices more on presentation and prestige rather than the food itself. Slowik is the utterly pretentious artist we’ve all seen, who doesn’t care for who is harmed by his work and is worshipped by his loyal fanbase despite the harm done.
Opposite to him is Margot Mills, played by Anya Taylor-Joy (she/her), who’s a guest at the exclusive dinner Slowik prepared. She’s against the nature of his art, viewing it all as an ego trip and pointing out the holes in what he has planned.
As said before though, it’s a dark comedy and we’re given a handful of hilarious moments with the hard-hitting messaging. There’s many gags throughout that make fun of the typical restaurant antics one is likely to have seen or experience themselves, such as one character’s friends telling the chef it’s their birthday and it becoming a huge, embarrassing show.
Then there’s the dark aspect of the dark comedy, and I must say that while many moments had me laughing, as it all turns more sinister I found myself holding my breath too. It has many insanely tense moments where I’m filled with as much dread as a more typical horror movie, many of them helmed by Fiennes’ character but also the character of Elsa, played chillingly by Hong Chau (she/her).
Overall, it’s a real treat of a film that serves the audience everything they could possibly ask for, ranging from laughs to a spine-tingling sense of fear. If I were to review The Menu on Yelp, it would certainly be a 5/5 star rating.
One of my earlies memories was watching stories unfold on a small TV in my room. Ever since then, I've always wanted to become a filmmaker to put stories of my own onto all manner of screens. Being a fan of writing alongside this has also led to my love of writing analysis/reviews on the things I view. It's a joy to share to others my thoughts and insights on media.
