Burnt

 

As far as myths go, there are two I’d comfortably rank above Bigfoot: cooking as an art form and the acting ability of Bradley Cooper. Director John Wells has combined them both in what is, comfortably, the worst film I’ve seen all year.

I’m happy to admit that this might just be a matter of personal preference, but, for me, there’s no greater example of the Emperor’s New Clothes in cinema currently than Bradley Cooper. He’s stunk in everything I’ve ever seen him in, from the awful Hangover movies, to ruining the otherwise great The Place Beyond the Pines or the ridiculous Silver Linings Playbook; he has a frat-boy smarm that masquerades as charisma, and the emotional range little better than most daytime soap actors. He reminds me of a career politician, no real talent or individuality, but probably just the guy who turns up on time, doesn’t piss of the wrong people, always ready with a handshake and a shit-eating grin. Obviously, all of this is coming directly out of my asshole, as I don’t know the first thing about the guy. But his mediocrity is what now passes as leading man material, and so we see him reunited with Sienna Miller, co-star in the equally appalling (although far more morally repugnant) American Sniper.

He plays the bad-boy chef Adam Jones, whose bridge-burning, self-destructive tendencies have seen him ruin his reputation as a rock star chef, leaving his career in tatters. Determined to redeem himself, he arrives in London to spearhead a top restaurant in search of his third Michelin star with the help of some old acquaintances. As awful as that brief synopsis sounds, it cannot possibly do justice to the vacuous, dull story, the tepid, uninspiring direction or the utterly loathsome characters present in Burnt.

As an audience, we’re meant to cheer for Jones, because we all love the foul-mouthed Gordon Ramsay (whose name appearing as an Executive Producer in the opening credits should have chased me out of the screening faster than James Holmes) type. But what are we actually cheering for? He’s arrogant, charmless, aggressive, misogynistic and entirely unlikeable. It attempts to be a tale of redemption, but Jones still sounds like the same loathsome prick he always was judging by the badly written anecdotes shared by his fellow chefs, just without the drugs and alcohol. The director lets us know that Jones is still a bad boy at heart by having him wear a dirty white t-shirt and leather jacket, while riding a motorbike with no helmet, like the bad-guy in a Molly Ringwald movie. Crazier still, he sometimes loses his temper and throws ramekins full of soufflé around, staying up all night trying to cook the perfect turbot and insulting people with his fresher-than-paint attitude. He might be a world-class chef guys, but don’t think he’s above eating at Burger King.

But even if this wasn’t one of the worst written and acted films I’d ever seen, it’s about a chef trying to win a third Michelin star, so who cares anyway. Ratatouille got away with it, but only because it was a rat (rather than a terrible actor) trying to make it as a chef. That film was also about genuine passion for food, rather than the juvenile, petty zilch throwing his toys out the pram because he’s over done his risotto. I know there are a lot of self-proclaimed foodies who might disagree, but the creation of food is not an art form. It’s a skill, it’s a craft, and it certainly can be impressive, but when I hear it being treated with the same reverence as music or theatre I want to trap my face in a George Foreman grill. It’s a cheap, easy way to consider yourself cultured because reading requires too much effort. To see a film as uninteresting as Burnt treat a chef like fucking Michelangelo because he nailed an omelette is just too much. It crossed my mind that I might actually be watching the greatest post-modern parody of the whole foodie obsession unfold, where a character so unlikeable chasing a dream so pointless had been created to mock how stupid the whole affair is. But as a (spoiler alert) drunken Bradley Cooper smashed into his rival’s kitchen and tried to kill himself by putting a zip-lock plastic bag over his head I realized that, sadly, Burnt is as much the steaming pile of shite that its Jilly Cooper-esque posters and crummy “Never underestimate a man with everything to lose” tagline suggest it might be.

I’ve seen some bad films this year, Jurassic World and Entourage to name a couple of the worst, but at least those two abominations knew what they were. Burnt genuinely thinks it’s an interesting, snappy piece of work and has ambitions far above the ability of its director and actors, the nature of its subject matter and the generic, hackneyed storyline. The dialogue would shame most porn films, with the majority of characters offering little more than exposition or lines almost explicitly telling the audience how they should be feeling and reacting.  It stinks on every level imaginable.

I cannot remember hating a film as much from beginning to merciful end than I did this. It caused a visceral reaction in me that I didn’t think possible from cinema, good or bad: it’s lazy, arrogant, pointless and utterly devoid of a single redeeming quality. Given the choice, I’d gladly choose to have Jurassic World projected directly into my pinned-open eyes like Alex in A Clockwork Orange from now until the end of eternity than watch a single miserable frame of Burnt again. 

Burnt is currently showing in Nottingham cinemas.

Burnt Trailer