Also, after missing it for the three weeks or so, caught the Bradley Cooper is a mean chef movie Burnt. I hadn’t missed much… but I’m not unhappy I saw this movie? I’m going to give it a shrug, basically.

Premise: Cooper plays a two Michelin star chef who flames out on ego, booze, drugs, and women…. the movie starts with him shucking oysters as personal penance and then returning to London to prove that he’s still an amazing chef. Can he redeem himself, can he adjust to new cooking standards, will he find love and romance, will his ego kick his butt, etc.

This is a weird movie in that there’s not one thing I can say was specifically wrong with the movie. The acting is fine, the writing is fine, the direction is fine, etc. Yet I was not really into the movie… it wasn’t compelling, and it took some thinking to figure out why.

It’s a cooking/chef/restaurant movie that loves to look at food but doesn’t really make watching them cook it or people eat it interesting. So the basic job that Cooper’s character has to win at is just incidental to the movie. This may seem weird but if you’ve ever seen Chef, The 100 Foot Journey, or Big NIght, those movies make cooking exciting. Interesting. Even thrilling. Burnt doesn’t get there so maybe just being a flick only about whether an egotistical jerk can get back on his feet isn’t interesting enough when what he’s trying to get back isn’t interesting.

So, yeah, this movie is fine. It’s ok. Maybe, if you see it some day, you’ll find it more interesting than I did. I can’t say it’s bad, so… yeah. There ya go. Moving on.

Score: 71