The other night, I streamed 2022’s The Menu on HBO Max. It was a film that I intended to see in theaters, but I never found the opportunity. This being an unfortunate turn of events as The Menu was probably one of the best movies of last year. The cast is stellar, the writing is witty, the atmosphere is dangerous, and it all comes together to create a film that is a fun, interesting time. 

The Menu is directed by Mark Mylod and stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Ralph Fiennes, and John Leguizamo amongst its ensemble. Taylor-Joy and Hoult play a couple among other groups of high class citizens all coming together for a prestigious dinner at the Hawthorne, which holds residence on a remote island.

Easily, the stand outs of the film are Fiennes and Taylor-Joy as their chemistry is what drives the feature. Fiennes plays Julius Slowik, a demented Gordan Ramsay who’s equal parts pretentious and lonely. He adds layers to an already fantastic script and delivers a character who switches from scary, to funny, to relatable, to incredibly annoying all over the span of a seemingly quick 100 minutes. Meanwhile Taylor-Joy as Margot is a relatable more middle class skeptic who thinks all of the pretentiousness is an act for Slowik. Over the course of the film the two begin butting heads despite Slowik’s beautifully formulated plan. A large part of this film is a cat and mouse dynamic between the two and that just wouldn’t work without their chemistry. Luckily enough, casting directors Mary Vernieu and Bret Howe assembled an ensemble for the ages. 

The film also has incredible talent behind the camera and makes the film an even faster, tenser, funnier experience. Mylod comes in to create an atmosphere that is tense, but still incredibly fun which works perfectly with the darkly comedic script by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy. As well, the editing by Christopher Tellefsen created some hilarious moments as there are incredibly funny cuts from a scene of suffocating tension to a goofy introduction of a dish. There’s an endless amount of talent behind this film and it all comes together to create a (mostly) perfect experience. 

The one thing that took me out of the film was the incredibly bland cinematography. There’s no shot in this film that feels all that lively and as I said before most of the flair comes from the editing. As well there’s very little color grading to the film and it has this bland look to go along with its bland cinematography. This a common occurrence of what I call the “Four Star Effect” which goes as thus: a film can have incredible talent in front of the camera, an amazing script, good to great direction, but if it does not propel itself to do better in the act of the filming than there’s a chance a large portion of the film’s character can be taken away. Therefore turning a great film into just an enjoyable one. This has happened with many movies I’ve seen before, but can most commonly be found with Netflix originals. 

The Menu is definitely worth the watch. It has so many fantastic elements that one subpar element doesn’t take away from the overall experience. You can now watch The Menu on HBO Max. Four out of five Cat Paws.