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Restaurant kitchens, especially kitchens in fine dining restaurants, seem like inner sanctums. We don’t know what goes on in there, but food emerges at the hands of servers almost like magic. In a way it’s like a curtain going up, and like the theater, it can be plenty cutthroat, and not everyone makes it out alive or with their dignity intact. 2015’s Burnt takes us into the inner sanctum, and while there are culinary delights to be had and drama to behold, it winds up being just another movie.

Chef Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) used to be at the top of his game in the Paris restaurant industry, when he bombed out big time because of drugs and alcohol abuse. Now it’s two years later, Adam is clean and sober, and he wants to rebuild the bridges he just burned. He’s also got his eye on a third Michelin star, and he’s planning on opening a new restaurant in London.

None of it’s going to be easy, of course. Adam’s got to eat serious dirt. He lives with a fellow chef and his girlfriend and plies them with gourmet meals first thing in the morning, some featuring the most gorgeous shrimp on the planet. He’s also got to talk fast to get his former colleagues to join him at his new restaurant. They’re almost like a mob, really, with their own skeletons in their proverbial closets. One of them is even about to get out of prison, and Adam is there to meet him with an invite to work at the new restaurant.

They’ve also brought in some new talent, well, new to Adam, anyway. Chef and single mom Helene (Sierra Miller) has joined the team and has her own ideas about the restaurant biz. She even brings in a mysterious new device called a Sous Vide.

I have a Sous Vide. My brother gave it to me a couple of years ago and I’m kind of afraid to use it. I don’t know why.

In addition to getting the restaurant up and running, Adam has to see a therapist, Dr. Rosshilde (Emma Thompson) at least once a week. She’ll take a blood test to make sure he’s clean and listen to Adam pour his heart out if need be. She also keeps tabs on Adam through his co-workers.

Adam tries hard, but he initially comes across as wishy-washy, presumptuous and pretty jerky. For someone who ruined his life and career that badly, he shouldn’t be interviewing or demanding or critiquing or acting as if other people owe him. He should be going around giving out mea culpas like they’re going out of style. I don’t care how many culinary masterpieces this guy whips up while his friends are asleep, even if they include the most succulently meaty prawns. Adam’s penitence is sorely lacking, and it takes more than metaphorical gourmet butter to get around that.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter, because Adam has a journey to take. A lot of it involves montages of him meeting with Dr. Rosshilde, cooking in the restaurant doing normal chef stuff, his staff cooking the restaurant doing normal chef stuff, and in between it’s all punctuated by Adam smashing plates with or without food on them, various other setbacks and let’s not forget the drug dealers who Adam owes money to kicking his tail on occasion. Why he doesn’t have them arrested is anyone’s guess, but maybe these things are handled differently in Britain.

Eventually, and this is sort of infuriating because it could have been done sooner and saved everyone a lot of trouble, Anne Marie pays the drug dealers off. She owed them money just as much as Adam did. It’s kind of unfair that Adam takes all the knocks, though, but evidently we’re supposed to think he deserves it. Which he probably does at first.

It’s not that much of a spoiler to say that Adam does get a clue, eventually, and there’s the question of whether he’ll learn how to be a team player. It doesn’t hurt that Helene is a great teammate and romance brews between she and Adam. Michel’s not so hot, but every team has a weak link somewhere, and that’s as close I’ll come to spoiling anything.

Where the film really shines, of course, is in its presentation of food. It’s seriously gorgeous in a French Laundry kind of way. Well, the food in Adam’s restaurant and that of his fellow chefs looks amazing. It’s not hard to get big eyes, at least until we remember that this type of cuisine costs at least three figures per plate.

In its favor, according to people who have worked in the restaurant business, Burnt is apparently pretty accurate. Chefs aren’t generally known for being the nicest, most well-adjusted people, and the kitchens in Burnt look like laboratories, or in Reese’s case, a morgue. Blindingly, impeccably white and clean. Meals could be eaten off the floor, except that they’re eaten off of blindingly, impeccably white and clean plates..

One of the only times we don’t see a kitchen in a restaurant is during a brief stop at Burger King, and I’m only pointing this out because it’s the second time in less than a month that I’ve seen a Whopper in a movie. Sigh. It would be tempting if Burger King wasn’t so awful, but I digress.

While Burnt has plenty of good points, and while redemption is never a bad thing, the movie is best when the food is the focus, and even then it’s pretty perfunctory with mostly wasted calories.

For more of the Food and Film Blogathon, please see Sally at 18 Cinema Lane. Thanks for hosting this, Sally–it was a great idea! Hope you bring it back. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you all Saturday for a new Cooking With the French Chef post…

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Burnt is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon. It is also currently streaming on the Roku Channel.

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