The Dinner

Cooking shows are everyday on TV, on almost every channel. I don´t think all of these cooking shows are bad, but it can be a bit much to watch every single one of them. I usually try and look at the more original cooking shows, that dare to try something else, with a fresh twist on the standard cooking TV show. That is why we should have a new cooking show, simply called Getting Hardcore With Fredrik Strage. A TV cooking show where Swedish Icon Fredrik Strage cooks the great, hip/hop, punk, metal meals, with his sidekick Mikkey Dee, former drummer of Motörhead, now playing for Scorpions. Just imagine what an awsome cooking show that would be. I sometimes wonder how i can come up with these amazing ideas, must be because i am one of the biggest Swedish fans of Corey Feldman´s music albums. I love to sit down and enjoy homemade meals, with friends, or with family, and i try to cook some lovely meals. Speaking of dinners, how many classic films have you not seen where food is the basic ingredient? One of my personal favourite films, where food is the subject, has to be director Jon Favreau´s drama comedy film Chef. A charming and well made film, with a great cast of talented actors. I can also recommend that you see Julie & Julia with Meryl Streep, also a charming film, based on the story of famous chef Julia Child, who inspired the young woman Julie Powell to cook all 524 recipes, from Julia Child´s cookbook in 365 days. Using food themes in films can be a very clever idea, depending on what the story is, and in what way you present the theme of the film. That is why i was curious to see a film, simple called The Dinner, that came out earlier this year. The film was never screened in Sweden, so i had to watch the film on dvd instead. One thing that i noticed was how good the cast was in this film. Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney, Chloe Sevigny, Adepero Oduye and many more, in the same film. Of course i just had to see The Dinner, to see if this could be one of the highlights of this year. With a golden cast, and a talented director, is The Dinner a film everyone should take the time to see, or should the film be thrown in the restaurant garbage can ?

Paul Lohman ( Steve Coogan ) and his wife Claire Lohman ( Laura Linney ) are going to have a nice dinner at a lovely restaurant, where they will meet up with Paul´s politician brother Stan Lohman ( Richard Gere ) and his wife Katelyn Lohman ( Rebecca Hall ). Since Paul and his brother Stand don´t get a long very well, they all try and sit down, just to enjoy a nice dinner. But during this evening, some secrets may be revealed that will change their lives.

I was hoping that The Dinner would be an interesting film, with different personalities meeting up for a dinner. What we get is something completely different. This is the kind of drama film, where you need to have patience. You have to wait to find out answers, or you might not understand the plot of the film. If you don´t have patience to wait, then this is probably the wrong film for you to see. The Dinner is departed into different pieces of the story. We get to learn more about the characters, both while they are sitting down for dinner, but also outside the restaurant. Since this film is 2 hours long, you should find out a lot of interesting details, about this gathering. But we only find out certain details, and the rest of the scenes are filled out with a lot of dialogue. The film also jumps, forward and backwards, trying to explain certain details about some of the main characters. I can tell you that it takes a long time, before i found something interesting about this film. And that part is founding out more about Steve Coogan´s character Paul. When he finds out what his son did with a homeless person, and that his wife cheated on him, you can at least see some acting, compared to some very slowly moments throughout the film. Steve Coogan is a really good actor, but i don´t think he uses his full potential in The Dinner, and that is such a shame. Because he clearly could have made his character something special, if he only would have digged deeper into the personality and the personal issues. Richard Gere is here as well, but the moments he have screen time, don´t really make any big changes for the film. Considering how fantastic he was in the thriller drama Arbitrage, he does not seem to care much about his character in The Dinner. Actor Laura Linney was absolutely brilliant in the drama film The Savages, but she also does not seem to give her character much effort in The Dinner. There are more great actors i could mention in this film, but with so much potential with a great cast, it feels like it does not matter, because The Dinner does not deliver, as much as it should have. Director Oren Moverman have actually directed 2 great films in the past, The Messenger with Woody Harrelson and Time Out Of Mind with Richard Gere. It is nice to see him work with Richard Gere again, but he clearly loose focus on the most interesting parts of this film, and just throws it all together. The Dinner is not completely awful, there are some interesting scenes in the film, but in the end you don´t really care. I suggest you see Arbitage with Richard Gere instead, and see that he can be an incredible good actor. The Dinner might make you fall asleep, i almost did a few times.

Rating: DD