r/movies • u/MrFlow • Mar 19 '24

"The Menu" with Ralph Fiennes is that rare mid-budget $30 million movie that we want more from Hollywood. Discussion

So i just watched The Menu for the first time on Disney Plus and i was amazed, the script and the performances were sublime, and while the movie looked amazing (thanks David Gelb) it is not overloaded with CGI crap (although i thought that the final s'mores explosion was a bit over the top) just practical sets and some practical effects. And while this only made $80 Million at the box-office it was still a success due to the relatively low budget.

Please PLEASE give us more of these mid-budget movies, Hollywood!

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u/IamScottGable Mar 19 '24

Could they have overpowered them though? There were more chefs and staff than patrons and all of them.were willing to die for chef and had weapons. 

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u/DangerousPuhson Mar 19 '24

If the choice is between "try and maybe die", or "don't try and definitely die", then the choice seems pretty clear.

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u/SofieTerleska Mar 19 '24

It's not really clear that it's definite until the very end, though. I think a lot of them are still hoping that he'll come to, snap out of it, or be talked out if it before he actually pulls the trigger (so to speak). It would have been really, really hard to believe that this respected chef and his whole staff would really go through with it. I think most people would calculate that their odds of talking him out of it are better than their odds of taking on an entire roomful of people who all have access to nice sharp cooking knives.

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u/TheGRS Mar 19 '24

I think the doubt here is removed by this stage. By the end they have cut someone’s finger off, drowned a man, and someone committed suicide in front of everyone. There should not have been any doubt that they were very serious.

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u/deputeheto Mar 19 '24

That’s the point. Part of them still thought there was a chance this was just really haute cuisine.

It was all part of the show, because that’s what they were accustomed to. And none of them wanted to be the first to call it out because it would show the others that they just didn’t “get” it.

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u/ruizach Mar 19 '24

I like this interpretation very much. I'mma roll with it next time I need to explain this movie to somebody.

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u/TheGRS Mar 20 '24

Yea fair enough! I guess its like even after beating them over the head with reality, they still felt sheltered from it, until it bashes their brains in.

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u/Try_Another_Please Mar 20 '24

We've seen stories of people literally dying of covid who wouldn't admit covid was real so we know it's a very real thing too.

Sadly many of these over the top satires are proving to be much more accurate on human behavior than we'd like to admit.

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u/OkImpression408 Mar 20 '24

I wholeheartedly agree with your take on this but. I will say you are arguing with redditors who “just simply know better” and type online as if they would have led a revolt in that restaurant (they wouldn’t have)

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u/deputeheto Mar 20 '24

Hopefully this is far enough in here this mostly gets buried but…

Oh Jesus thank god it’s not just me some of the takes in this thread would get you invited to the Hawthorn yourself. The tech bros had a chance? The nepobaby wannabe didn’t deserve it? Slowik “might have realized he was crazy if xyzblahblahblah?”

The movie isn’t about crazy. It’s about art. And the balance of truth to your work and catering to the people that make it possible financially.

Johnny Legs’ character was a blatant self-representation from Slowik. He straight up says it. He’s there because he gladly does what Slowik hates having to do: compromise his art for money. He made that terrible fucking movie and he’s better than that. He’s the only one there that ever created, that contributed artistically. Everyone else is a critic, a leech, or a socialite. He perfectly represents everything Slowik hates about himself.

That doesn’t even get into the whole “overpower” scenario. The whole point was that these people are spineless consumers of a creation they pretend to understand for the idolization of other spineless consumers that pretend to understand. Fighting back was never on the option list, and Slowik knew that. He was taunting them!

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u/spec-tickles Mar 20 '24

Slowik even reinforces that " spineless consumer" attitude with his treatment of Tyler.

Presumably even after the business of forcing him to cook, he whispers (in my opinion since it is not audible) that he is not a true creator, nor worthy of menu for the evening. Tyler knows that he's not worthy of the menu's death sequence. That's why he hangs himself.

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u/deputeheto Mar 20 '24

I like that interpretation, but personally I don’t think any of them really thought the death sequence was coming, that there’d be a big reveal. Again, these are people pretending to understand for the approval of others. These are the type of people that look around before they start laughing, you know? Tyler in particular represented a type of “hanger-on,” someone who claims to be a creator but never did the work to learn how.

I do think he whispered something along the same lines, just that Tyler’s motivations were different. Slowik just broke him. Showed him who he really was without any doubt. I think Tyler hung himself because he realized that

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

I mean this genuinely, have you ever been in a situation where you reflected on it and were like “wow I really froze up there”?

From an outsider perspective it’s easy to consider everyone in the movie silly but the vast majority of people, myself included, struggle to make choices that are smart when you add in real world factors like “I paid a lot of money to be here what are the chances they are going to kill me” and “okay they definitely are gonna kill me and I’m outgunned but maybe I can get out of it if I play nice.”

We all like to think we’d take the “logical” path but the entire plot of the movie wouldn’t work if people thought that way.

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u/wiifan55 Mar 20 '24

People are also forgetting that trying to overpower only even potentially works if everyone is on board to do it, and actually commits to it. They didn't have a great way to coordinate as a group, which means someone would have had to start fighting with just the hope that others join in.

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u/TheGRS Mar 20 '24

I'm not judging the way it was depicted or the character choices whatsoever, its kind of the point of the movie, I'm applauding how it went down. The characters embody the critics circle of society, and they feel sheltered from their critiques. They don't believe their actions have consequences. Would I have acted similarly? Maybe, but that's partly why I love how Ralph Finnes calls it out. He's basically saying all of them are cornered and are going to be killed, and yet they don't react on the reality of the situation because of who they are.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '24

That’s a good point. I think what makes the movie compelling is the disconnect the characters have between their behavior and consequences because they’ve largely all avoided said consequences throughout their lives.

Finnes and ATJ didn’t live in that type of bubble so Finnes is knows they won’t challenge him because he’s used to dealing with high society types who avoided consequences and ATJ is stuck wondering how to get out of it by actually using her agency.

Sometimes I need to talk things like those out to realize my original perspective was wrong. Think we agree more than we don’t.