Personally, I found
The Menu to be "lousy"—one of the two worst movies that I have seen this year, along with this summer's
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. While
The Menu hints at being amusing here and there, especially early on, I almost never found it funny. Meanwhile, its attempts to shock and horrify the audience are way too obvious and contrived, and consequently, so is some of the acting, even from Ralph Fiennes in a central part that ultimately feels superficial. Anya Taylor-Joy does better with this desultory film, but even she is not immune from occasional overacting, induced by the utterly unsubtle material (and perhaps by the director, Mark Mylod). The cast offers talent, and Hong Chau and John Leguizamo probably fare best by underplaying matters slightly. Regardless, the casting could not save a film that serves as a way-too-obvious satirical joke.
There is some ambition here, namely in the filmmakers' desire to say something about idolization and submission, autocracy and sado-masochism, the cultivation of a cult. Indeed, while I briefly thought of Donald Trump at one point during the movie, the denouement instead suggests an analogy to Jim Jones and Jonestown. And there are moments, and portions of scenes, that suggest the potential for an ironic, dynamic, enticing experience.
But the film fails to flow effectively. It feels rushed, and at one hour and forty-seven minutes, it probably should have run two hours in length. Worse, it is a heavily (although unimpressively) stylized movie that nonetheless tries to hint at phenomenology (as if matters are just happening spontaneously and naturally). Blending the two modes is very difficult, if not impossible, and
The Menu's attempt is insufferably clunky. Indeed, it fails to foster any genuine mystery, intrigue, or character development.
One receives a bad sign right at the start upon immediately realizing that the sound mixing of the dialogue is too low. (I saw the
The Menu at a standard/high-quality AMC theater.) One can hear the dialogue sufficiently, but it does not resonate well and plays too far below the musical score. There is, perhaps, an attempt by Mylod to create a Robert Altman-style atmosphere where lots of different ambient sounds and conversational chatter are being picked up—again, part of
The Menu's awkward attempt to blend a phenomenological experience with a heavily stylized one. But that ambition still would not excuse or explain the main dialogue failing to resonate crisply and playing at a much lower pitch than the score.
Ironically, I had just finished Helen Mirren's
MasterClass on acting and she notes at one point that if the dialogue in a scene fails to resonate richly and fully, it just throws everything off and can pretty much ruin a film. Unfortunately, all of
The Menu is like that, but I would not say that this element ruins the movie. Instead, plenty of elements combine to do so.
(For what it may be worth, there was one other person in the theater when I saw the film on Thursday afternoon, and that person left halfway through.)
