An Exquisite Meal (2020) Review

An Exquisite Meal (2020) Review

An affluent couple hosts a dinner party for friends, promising them an amazing meal. As the night goes on, uninvited guests arrive, wine flows, and dinner is strangely delayed.

When the party is interrupted by a shocking diversion, one of the guests goes off on his own and discovers something unexpected about what’s being served for dinner.

As identities unravel, the host tries to maintain control of his carefully orchestrated evening as the party descends into violence, bizarre sexual escapades, and the absurd.

Intended as a sharply satirical genre-bending journey through one absurdly terrifying dinner party in modern America, AN EXQUISITE MEAL ultimately chews off more than it can swallow. Writer and director Robert Bruce Carter has so many ideas on the go that nothing is allowed to take full form within the film’s meagre hour’s runtime.

There are a lot of ideas here but little in the way of a coherence, I ended up rather muddled rather than enthralled and despite earnest performances from the cast the film misses every mark it sets itself up to fire at. I get that it’s pouring scorn on the middle-class however the house, the prime location, didn’t strike me as being that of a middle-class couple.

The narrative is constantly tripping over itself and consequently much of what we are presented with makes next to no sense at all. The hosts tell us that they have got back from India only to say moments later that they have only just got back from Scotland too. It’s meant to be mickey-taking but instead ends up playing like it’s been badly constructed, the humour just does not hit the mark – check out the scene where the camera zooms in on each cast member as they say ‘the Atlantic’ with the punchline of focusing on a painting. This is a perfect example of how misplaced and unformed the comedy is. As for being sold as a horror/thriller this film is neither.

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