The Menu

It may be one of Ralph Fiennes most uninteresting films.

With The Menu, Hollywood has exhausted a topic that dominates recent films. As in Triangle of Sadness and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, a small, wealthy group of people are invited to a boat/island where they face destruction.

Here, 12 people receive invitations to a remote island to eat at a famous chef’s restaurant. The price is $1,250 per person, so the food better be good.

This is largely a boring group of snobs wanting to promote their own self-worth. Only Nicholas Hoult, Anya Taylor-Joy and Hong Chau capture your attention.

Hoult plays Tyler, a culinary fan, and Ms. Taylor-Joy is his foul-mouthed date. She stands out as she did in Amsterdam, and she is the only character you will like. Ms. Chau is the chef’s assistant, and she functions as a dictator who monitors all the guests.

Ralph Fiennes plays Chef Slowik, a controlling professional about to unload surprises on his guests. He claps his hands to bring silence to the room, with his cooks standing together and yelling “Yes, Chef” to his every demand.

Chef Slowik serves more than food, with injury and death served as hors d’oeuvres to the frantic guests. Forget this film and do yourself a favor and hunt down Mr. Fiennes in such great movies as the Harry Potter movies, The English Patient (1996), Schindler’s List (1993), In Bruges (2008) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) to name a few.