The Menu: satire or flubs...

R

Rahsaan

Rahsaan
Saw this on the airplane yesterday. Anyone else watch it and start the film knowing it was supposed to be satire but feel that the attention to gastronomic detail was perfectly reasonable?!

Of course that line was soon pushed beyond recognition as the plot developed...

Although the attention to the wine details was less than perfect, which grated, given the ambition of the film. And I don't think I'm being too precious here, because the wine in their glasses changing colors between shots (with no other explanation like a course change) makes no sense and should not be intentional?!
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
The Menu: satire or flubs...Saw this on the airplane yesterday. Anyone else watch it and start the film knowing it was supposed to be satire but feel that the attention to gastronomic detail was perfectly reasonable?!

Of course that line was soon pushed beyond recognition as the plot developed...

Although the attention to the wine details was less than perfect, which grated, given the ambition of the film. And I don't think I'm being too precious here, because the wine in their glasses changing colors between shots (with no other explanation like a course change) makes no sense and should not be intentional?!
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Yup, I watched it. It was vaguely entertaining, but I thought was so OTT as to stray into outright silliness. I agree about the attention to gastronomic detail, though. I felt like it was a rather obvious dig at Noma, but perhaps that was just my reading of it.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
I felt like it was a rather obvious dig at Noma, but perhaps that was just my reading of it.

Mark Lipton
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Yes, Noma (and New Nordic) seemed to be one clear dig at first. Although I guess they went broader as well.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by MLipton:
I felt like it was a rather obvious dig at Noma, but perhaps that was just my reading of it.

Mark Lipton
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Yes, Noma (and New Nordic) seemed to be one clear dig at first. Although I guess they went broader as well.
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Not to mention the Willows Inn, which also has a Noma connection: Willows Inn

[Finally - couldn't embed the link on a tablet, had to go to a laptop. Computers, feh. Never could get the hang of them...]
 
It's a polarizing movie. I hated it -- felt, as others above, that it was OTT, which therefore made it poor as satire goes. But I know others who loved it.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
It's a polarizing movie. I hated it -- felt, as others above, that it was OTT, which therefore made it poor as satire goes. But I know others who loved it.
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Considering the over-the-top nature of places like el Bulli and NOMA, I don't believe there is another way to satirize them.
 
Apart from the violence it did not seem that OTT to me. They got a lot of the bs going on in some of the hippest restaurants exactly right. And the guest characters were also spot on.
 
I've never eaten at Nomi. I did think the idea of turning dinner into a conceptual art form was a nice satire on the notion that cuisine is art and on restaurants that seem to take up that idea. The business with the cheeseburger served with velveeta was the perfect contrast. I could sort of see killing guests for being stupid enough to go along with that as part of the satire, but that and the killing of staff did go over the top.
 
originally posted by georg lauer:
Apart from the violence it did not seem that OTT to me. They got a lot of the bs going on in some of the hippest restaurants exactly right. And the guest characters were also spot on.
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Yes, it was the violence that got a bit goofy for me, especially considering how big a chunk of the movie that was. I could have handled a deeper more incisive satirical dive that remained more focused on the restaurant stuff.

But nobody writes movies for me!
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by georg lauer:
Apart from the violence it did not seem that OTT to me. They got a lot of the bs going on in some of the hippest restaurants exactly right. And the guest characters were also spot on.
Click to expand...

Yes, it was the violence that got a bit goofy for me, especially considering how big a chunk of the movie that was. I could have handled a deeper more incisive satirical dive that remained more focused on the restaurant stuff.

But nobody writes movies for me!
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After you got the joke, staying with it would have gotten old. Like bicycles and capitalism, narrative either moves forward or falls down.
 
What joke? The value need not just be poking fun at fine dining, but seeing how they pushed it and where it went.

The tension here was seeing who would die and how it would happen. But there are lots of ways to introduce character-based tension into a story set in a fine-dining restaurant.

Of course I realize they saw the film in a different way, as a horror film that happened to be in a restaurant. So more power to them!
 
originally posted by georg lauer:
Apart from the violence it did not seem that OTT to me. They got a lot of the bs going on in some of the hippest restaurants exactly right. And the guest characters were also spot on.
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I have no taste for violence or s&m, both of which dominated the film.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
What joke? The value need not just be poking fun at fine dining, but seeing how they pushed it and where it went.
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I'm not sure what your distinction here is. They had a point about cuisine taken as art. After a couple of courses, they had made that point. It was then that the film turned to the corruptness of the people engaged in the process and thus to the violence. I have trouble imagining a two hour movie that stayed at the satiric level of the first 45 minutes or so.
 
I'm not a screenwriter, but there are all sorts of directions they could have gone, and plotlines they could have developed with the corruption angle, without making it a horror film about mass suicide.

But like I said, I don't begrudge people making the movie they wanted to make!
 
This thread leaves me with no desire to see this film, which I had previously intended to watch.

If you want a fun (large) set of shorty funny skits on the restaurant industry from a less pretentious and self-indulgent viewpoint, I recommend checking out drewtalbert on Instagram.
 
originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
This thread leaves me with no desire to see this film, which I had previously intended to watch.

If you want a fun (large) set of shorty funny skits on the restaurant industry from a less pretentious and self-indulgent viewpoint, I recommend checking out drewtalbert on Instagram.
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I thought the first half of the movie quite good. And the cast is very good too. You could just turn it off when the violence starts, but then you'll miss the cheeseburger scene.
 
I only watched a small amount of it and it hit a bit too close to home as someone who eats at a lot of the types of restaurants it parodies. But honestly it is not wrong so it did not bother me.
 
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