Ever since “The Hangover” turned Bradley Cooper into a Hollywood A-lister, he has been steering away from comedy and towards drama, but he has never been more hilarious than he is in his side-splitting new film, “Burnt”. The only problem is that it isn’t supposed to be funny. Built on the shaky proposition that restaurant chefs are both divinely inspired artists and dangerously sexy rock-stars, Mr Cooper’s absurd vanity project is meant to be a searing portrait of genius, redemption and turbot-frying. But, actually, it is such a lip-smacking feast of pomposity and stupidity that its script, by Steven Knight, could easily be recycled for a Will Ferrell vehicle called "Anchorman 3: Ron Burgundy Goes Cordon Bleu".
It is, after all, a film in which the maitre’d of a high-end restaurant has to explain to his staff what the Michelin Guide is; in which newspapers run reviews of restaurants which haven’t yet served a single dish; and in which Uma Thurman, cameoing as a haughty English critic, has the priceless line, “I say to myself, ‘Simone, you’re a lesbian. Why did you sleep with Adam Jones?’”
The answer to that question is simple: everyone wants to sleep with Adam Jones. As legendary in the world of fine dining as Ron Burgundy is in the world of newsreading, Mr Cooper’s character is a perfectly stubbled, leather-jacketed, motorbike-racing Adonis. He also used to be the head chef of Paris’s best restaurant, before drugs and alcohol and all-round bad-assery got the better of him. But now, after years of self-imposed exile in a New Orleans diner, he is clean and sober and ready to make his comeback. All he has to do is to take over the restaurant in London’s Langham Hotel and snag his third Michelin star.
That sounds like a tall order. When Adam was in Paris, he was a notoriously spiteful screw-up who owed a fortune to drug dealers, so it is clear that he will have to work long and hard to get a job anywhere except McDonald’s. Or so you would think. In fact, an adoring friend of his, Tony (Daniel Bruhl), now manages Langham’s restaurant, and, despite Adam’s continual condescension, Tony hands him the keys to the kitchen in no time. It is just as easy for Adam to reassemble his old buddies from Paris, along with one newcomer, Helene (Sienna Miller), who happens to be beautiful and single.
Everyone, it seems, is willing to obey his every order—which is very nice for him, but very boring for the viewer. Partly, the other characters submit to him because, as mentioned, they all want to sleep with him, and partly it is because he is such a sensational chef. Not that “Burnt” reveals what is so special about his cooking. Like all cinematic foodies, Adam does lots of fruit-fondling and herb-sniffing, but no one ever says what sets him apart from the competition, or even what kind of cuisine he favours. Never before has a film set in a restaurant been so vague about what’s on the menu.
With no obstacles in Adam’s way, “Burnt” is padded out with go-nowhere scenes in which he lords it over a therapist (Emma Thompson) and a rival restaurateur (Matthew Rhys), but there is nothing standing between him and his third Michelin star except his own obnoxiousness—and, boy, is he obnoxious. “Burnt” buys into the Gordon Ramsay-fostered fallacy that to be a great chef is to be a monster of childish, short-tempered egomania, and so, for much of the running time, Adam is ranting and swearing and throwing crockery around, like J.K. Simmons’s music teacher in “Whiplash”, but without the wit or charisma.
It is impossible to care about this despotic psychopath’s ambitions, and although his tantrums can be unintentionally funny, in their Ferrellian excess, they can also be revolting. In one scene, the hulking Adam subjects Helene to a humiliating public tirade, and then grabs her by her shirt front and shoves her. Most viewers will be willing her to clonk him on the head with the nearest sauté pan, but instead she kisses him lustily in the alley behind the hotel. Maybe there’s nothing a girl likes more than a bit of verbal and physical abuse from her boss, or maybe she was bowled over by what, in “Burnt”, is considered the ultimate compliment: “I just think you and I are exactly the same,” he tells her. For her sake, you would hope that isn’t true.
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