Score: 1.5/5
A restaurant and an addict might seem like an unlikely combination, but if this peaks your interest you might enjoy the movie “Burnt.” Emphasis on the might.
Bradley Cooper stars as Chef Adam Jones. If Bradley Cooper weren’t the lead role, most viewers would likely walk away from the feature.
The movie tells the story of bad boy Chef Adam Jones, who was the successful chef at a two star restaurant in London. Three stars are the most you can get in London and is basically considered the Holy Grail of cooking.
Jones lost everything because of his drug and alcohol addiction, so as punishment, he sends himself to New Orleans to shuck a million oysters. The movie begins as he finishes his punishment and returns to London.
The whole movie focuses on him achieving the third star for his restaurant, with a few small subplots.
It doesn’t sound too awful just yet.
Then chaos wreaks havoc on his new restaurant, and Jones essentially turns into Gordon Ramsay. He yells at everyone, grabs the shirt of a female employee and shoves her, throws plates at the walls and curses frequently.
He is the equivalent of a toddler who isn’t getting what he wants. It’s boring, and if viewers wanted to watch all of that, they’d turn on “Hell’s Kitchen.”
His kitchen’s environment is comparable to a boiling pot of water on the verge of exploding. His staff responds to everything with “Yes, Chef” in a creepy, cultish way. He also forces them to eat food they prepared badly and apologize to a dead fish who was not treated with culinary respect.
Everything with Jones’ food is just wrong, according to him.
This is hard for viewers to wrap their heads around because it already looks like something out of a professional chef magazine. This causes the viewers to feel annoyed with his outrage. Take deep breaths, Chef Jones.
The movie lacks original personality. It misses the excitement and joy of creating new culinary masterpieces. Instead, it focuses too much on the life or death situation of Jones earning his third star. While there is no doubt it is life or death for Jones, the movies fails to make the viewers feel the same way.