It’s been a few weeks since I saw The Menu, and now after some chain events I can finally get to it. But before that, I need to make a quick announcement.
New Position
I have been given a new position at my job. It’s sort of a demotion because I am going from manager to assistant, but the new position is supposed to pay more. I’m already getting a raise, which I talked about last week, but it’ll be nice if I get another raise due to the new position. I’m not holding my breath, but I do have prayers. And I’m starting this new position tomorrow, and unlike what I have been doing for the past three years-ish, this one won’t have a semi-solid schedule. Before I could count on being home by 4pm.
Not anymore.
So, what this means for the blogging is that I will try to keep posting on Thursdays, but if I can’t post on Thursday because I’m closing, then I will aim for either an earlier or later day, depending on which is easier. The goal is still weekly postings, but it’s going to be hectic now.
If There’s a Substantial Raise…
If there’s a substantial raise, then I will feel more comfortable with what I am dealing with financially. Less stress is good for me because I’m very certain part of my writer’s gridlock is due to the stress of an extra $500 in bills (rounding up). It seriously took me fourteen days to post the next chapter of The Academy of Irregular Defense, and I haven’t even touched The Redemption Game after learning about its horrible errors.
And I’ve got a grand total of 13 stories that need to be told. Yay.
This also means that if there is a substantial raise then I will be able to afford advertisement. Which I have been looking at. More ads mean more money, and so on.
I believe God opened this new position for me and allowed me to take it so I can continue doing this writing hobby and get gradually more successful over time.
Who knows? Maybe the writing will go somewhere beyond this little speck on the internet.
Anyway, now that I have that out of the way, it is time for the review.
The Menu is Amazing
There are a few movies I enjoy. I can rewatch Jurassic Park, Interstellar, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Die Hard, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Fifth Element, John Wick, The Goonies, Atlantis the Lost Empire, The Lost Boys, Bullet Train and now The Menu. I’m sure there are more older movies I would enjoy if given the chance, but for modern movies, there’s just something off about them. Like, you go to a restaurant, and are advertised an excellent meal, just to die on the inside because you realized the food was bad and you just wasted your time and money.
Well, in the case of The Menu, it delivered what was promised. I was hesitant to watch it at first because I thought it was going to be a movie about chefs going insane and cannibalizing their guests. I only watched from YouTube rental it because I was bored, and morbid curiosity got the better of me. And I loved what I saw. The chefs did go insane, but nobody was cannibalized, so that was a huge plus, but the story is something that resonated with me.
The movie Office Space is easier to relate to if you’ve worked 9 to 5 office jobs (or 9 to 6 nowadays); Entry Level for those who have been unemployed and diligently search for work; and The Menu if you’ve worked in the kitchen. I worked fast food for over five years and school diner when I studied political science, which is not quite the same experience as the chefs in the professional kitchens, but there were enough similarities for me get locked in.
There is a lot of hectic work that goes on in the kitchen, and while fast food is about getting the food out as fast as possible (2 minutes or less as my boss’s boss said), the higher kitchens need speed and quality. And it only gets more difficult as the prestige of the restaurant gets higher. The worst part is that it is a thankless job. The restaurant industry as a whole is mentally and emotionally draining to the point where half of the chefs become addicted to drugs and/or alcohol and are 9% more vulnerable to suicide than the average person. And while I can’t say the responsibilities of a fast-food workers are equivalent to a higher chef, being a manager at a fast-food joint and getting paid $9.30 an hour to work 40 hours has assisted in filling my thoughts with ramming my truck full speed into a tree; or driving off a cliff.
The isolation, feeling stepped on, and lack of gratitude wears a food worker down, and The Menu has turned this dial up to 11. The characters you will see in the movie are the kinds you encounter at any restaurant. And I’ve had experience with all of those people, from the washout who thinks they’re a big shot, the critic who won’t survive in the kitchen, the obnoxious dude-bros, the people that are always there but look through you, and the one who has been there and can relate.
The Menu is a tightly told revenge fantasy story that takes place on an island restaurant, completely isolated from the world; and Ralph Fiennes plays the primary antagonist, Chef Slowik, who is a master chef that has had enough of his customers. So, he gathers the biggest names on his list, invites them to the best dinner ever, and long story short, he kills all of them in a way I have never seen before, and it was morbidly funny.
The movie is a dark satire of worker-customer relations, and life in the kitchen, and while it is not laugh-out-loud funny, it has plenty of moments that are darkly amusing. And this odd tone works very well for this movie. I was expecting cannibalism, but the movie refrains from gore for the most part, and instead uses atmospheric tension with occasional bursts of dark humor to give us a break. There are no jump scares, no obnoxious music to manipulate us into jump scares, and while the victims are essentially turds who pushed Chef Slowik over the edge, none of them are dumb, and there is a sense of pity for them. At least I felt pity for them. If the movie ended with Chef Slowik having a change of heart and letting these people go, I could see them leaving the island, learning their lesson and becoming better people. All the actors had performed very well, making the characters feel like real stuck in a terrifying situation. No one was obnoxious, no one was stupid, and all of them were acting based on fear instead of some corny, exaggerated antics to get cheap laughs or scares. And while the cultist chefs had limited lines, they were disciplined characters and terrifying in their own way. They didn’t need weird masks, weird voices, or act like loud lunatics. They were quiet, they were determined, and fanatically loyal to their boss and their mission to torment and eventually kill everyone.
But my favorite part of the movie is Ralph Fiennes’ performance. He did a lot of work by speaking through his eyes. I’ve never seen an actor give constant dead eyes. His performance was amazing as a person driven completely over the edge, and the glimmer of hope he had was illuminated by the request for a cheeseburger, but he and his cult crew of chefs knew that they were too far gone, and they had a plan and were sticking to it. In his eyes, he was as guilty as his customers for ruining the passion of cooking, and his crew felt the same way themselves, so everyone needed to be punished for ruining the joys of life and their passion for cooking. Chef Slowik completely mentally broken man who was going to see his mission through to the end. His careful planning would have been 100% successful if it wasn’t for the odd one out: Margot (played by Anya Taylor-Joy).
Margot wasn’t even supposed to be on the island, she actually took the real target’s place (and we never see the intended target anyway), so she was innocent in Slowik’s eyes. Though, he still wanted to kill her, but not as much, only because his seating had to be completely full for his plan. Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes played off each other very well; one defeated yet determined to see his plan through, and the other desperate to survive yet not letting emotions get in the way. Margot was my second favorite character because she’s the kind of protagonist we need more of. Someone truly relatable and not some super hyper trained killing machine or walking encyclopedia that serves as the manifested fist to punch strawmen.
I could see Margot being a real person, just like I could see Chef Slowik being real, and their situation being real.
With the story being so concentrated, we did not have to juggle too many plot points, too many locations, and as a viewer, I didn’t feel forced to feel certain way with manipulative music, lighting or over acting. And since it was a grounded movie, there wasn’t a need for green screen or animating anybody. The set was there. The people were there. And everyone acted phenomenally, and even though the cinematography and lighting were nothing special, they didn’t need to be because the story was strong enough to support itself without needing complicated maneuvers.
Everything about this movie felt real. It felt like I could see a headline about the events. And it would definitely be in Florida if it was real.
If I owned it, I would definitely watch it again from time to time. If you haven’t seen it yet, I would highly recommend you watch it. It’s not scary, and there are no cannibals.
5/5
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