Your chef tonight will be angry. Adam Jones won’t be getting a third star from me.
I always emerge hungry from food movies. Well … duh. After this one in particular, however, I couldn’t help thinking about all the food they’re tossing away because Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) is such a perfectionist. No! No! Don’t toss that! I don’t mind that the crust is a half-shade to the vermillion or that the inner temperature is off by two degrees Fahrenheit. Ahhh! There you go again!
Starting the film in self-penance mode, Paris-exile and two-star chef Adam Jones tells us he screwed up and now has to shuck 1,000,000 (yes, one million) oysters to repay his karmic debt. He keeps a little book to help him count. Of course, the very second he hits the million shell mark, he skips on his current obligation. You know, karma can be gained by shuckin’ but lost by jivin’. Just sayin’. Adam immediately heads to London to get the band back together and earn that elusive third star. He has sworn off booze, drugs, women, and being civil in his quest for star #3. It is only his immense talent that allows him the luxury of being an irritable monk; I don’t know how anyone could stand him for five minutes otherwise – try to imagine that guy you know who only talks sports, and then imagine that he makes no pretense of doing anything but talking sports and doesn’t care about anything that doesn’t involve sports talk. Now imagine he’s good looking enough to get laid while talking sports and you have a fair idea of Bradley’s character here.
Once in London, he bullies an old “friend,” Tony (Daniel Brühl), who just happens to own a hotel with a first-class restaurant. We should all have “friends” that own such things. Then he goes about collecting the supporting cast, including a talented sous chef who should loathe him (Omar Sy) and an upcoming #2/love interest (Sienna Miller, so much better here than her previous Bradley hookup). Does he collect these people just to treat them like last week’s goulash? Because that’s pretty much what he does. Wait, that’s not fair – you don’t yell at spoiled goulash
or get it fired. Tony has at least partial payback, making him go to weekly therapy/drug testing as a stipulation in Adam’s contract. There are worse things than spending an hour a week with Emma Thompson; I daresay I want that contract stipulation.
There’s a feeling in Burnt that everybody, and I mean everybody, from rivals to critics to staff, knows that Adam is the best chef in the world. I really don’t know how you could possibly know this – at some point, no matter how much perfection goes into a meal, it’s about taste. There are objective measures to many, many art forms, but top cuisine –like movies– isn’t on that list, and I know we don’t all have the same taste. Is The Godfather better than Casablanca? How could you ever say definitively? Anyway, Adam’s abrasive personality is tolerated precisely because we all accept that he’s the best. And strangely, his ex- (Alicia Vikander, his “Ex Machina?”) thinks so, too, even though everybody else from his past treats him with a sigh and a deep breath.
In a year of food films, Burnt is middle of the pack. The food is lovely, but inaccessible. He isn’t creating meals I will ever eat. Just like Adam Jones himself is lovely, but inaccessible. He hasn’t created a personality I will ever meet. I could get behind a philosophy that cherishes food as an art form rather than a means to an end; I also respect any chef who eats at and defends Burger King, loathe as I am to partake of that venue. The ingredients aren’t perfect, but the meal is palatable.
Great talent he hath spurnt
Over lessons left unlearnt
Risk to those who will be burnt
For the third star all he yearnt
Rated R, 101 Minutes
D: John Wells
W: Steven Knight
Genre: Food, glorious, food!
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Foodies
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Anorexies
