Burnt

Released:  October 30^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  The Weinstein Company

Starring:  Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Omar Sy, Daniel Brühl, Matthew Rhys, Alicia Vikander, Emma Thompson

Directed by:  John Wells

Written by:  Steven Knight

Personal Bias Alert:  likes Bradley Cooper, not a foodie

4.2 of 10

            Oh crap, a pun-ready title.  That encourages a hard stance, a snappy line that sums up the film in forty characters or less.  Too bad Burnt is messier than that, getting a bushel of things right and a peck of things wrong.  I’d be so easy to tell you all a funny yea or nay, but you’ll be better served by the honest breakdown that follows.  Still, the puns must go on, so here’s my effort:  The end result of Burnt is really more of a singe, luring you in with a solid couple only to give you a painful nip from the half-baked story.

            Still here?  Excellent, because it’s time to get to the good stuff:  Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, and all of the cast, really.  This is a film filled with people you’ll recognize but may not be able to place, and you’ll know them because they’re as solid a group of actors as you can get.  Obviously, everyone will know Cooper and Emma Thompson, and many will have gotten familiar with Alicia Vikander, but the rest are a hodgepodge of people who’ve been kicking around the international market for a decade plus.  They aren’t ones to phone in a performance, so even when this material falters, they’re able to pick it up and carry it to the finish line.

            And the material falters quite often, taking an overdone premise (asshole genius fighting his way back to the top) and adding an equally overdone twist by placing it in a small subset of society (high-end cooking).  If you dress up this outline correctly, people think it’s a modern masterpiece, but if you get it wrong, it becomes a groan-inducing bore.  Unfortunately, Burnt falls into the latter category, failing to make the world of chefs engaging or to make its antihero remotely likable.

            The film starts out on the wrong foot in the second category, showing Cooper’s Adam Jones shucking oysters until he hits the magical number of one million.  The instant he’s hit this, he takes a satisfied breath and walks out of the hole-in-the-wall restaurant he’s in, much to the consternation of his employers.  This is meant to play as a moment of redemption, a completion of penance for the wrongs he has done, but by walking away mid-shift, he proves that his time away hasn’t really changed him at all.  If this was simply a jumping-off point it would be a forgivable opening, but the character remains this way throughout most of the film, much to the annoyance of everyone around him, including the audience.  Cooper tries to play up his charm, but the character simply isn’t given any redeeming qualities except that he can allegedly cook well.  This, however, doesn’t engender any sympathy for the character because an understanding and love of cooking is never conveyed to the audience.  Director John Wells and cinematographer Adriano Goldman try to sell the cooking with some energetic montages of Cooper and company experimenting and working the service line, and while these scenes are visually stimulating, it doesn’t actually explain what the hell they’re doing.  The script tries to have the characters wax poetic about it with some clunker lines that are far too overwritten to be powerful, and in the end the cooking comes off as nothing more than a generic thing that all of the characters happen to be doing.  Given that this is a film about an obsessed antihero, the inability to empathize with his obsession is a massive hindrance.

            It’s actually the B-plot, a cliché-ridden romance between Cooper’s Adam and Miller’s Helene that works the best.  She’s a recruit to his new restaurant, and they allegedly bond over they’re passion and skill for cooking.  Again, the failure to explain the cooking hinders this romance on the page, but Cooper and Miller have enough chemistry to make it work on the screen.  Their scenes have an easiness to them that the rest of the film lacks, and for brief moments, you’re actually able to like both of them.  Unfortunately, this is the B-plot, and after a brief moment in the sun during the middle portion of the film, it fades behind the doldrums of kitchen life.

            You’re enjoyment of this movie will really come down to how much mileage you get out of a charming romance and how many clichés you can stomach.  If you’re driven insane by seeing the same movie plots over and over again, then Burnt will be rather unpalatable.  But if you go into it looking for an innocuous romance, then Cooper and Miller will take you on a satisfying little trip.

Other Notes:

Ø  If you want to feel something when you watch people eat, go watch I Am Love.

Ø  The costume design for this film was remarkably dull.  The guys rarely got out of their fitted leather jackets.

Ø  So are cooks really evaluated by a tire company?