Le Grand Chef

D-

Directed by Yun Su-Jeon

"Le Grand Chef'" by Korean director Yun Su-Jeon is essentially your classic, run of the mill underdog overcoming the odds story except that it deals with the high pressure, cuthroat world of Korean cooking.

The story centers around Sung-Chan, a talented yet humble chef whose promising career was destroyed several years earlier when he almost poisoned a handful of his customers via a particularly toxic cut of blowfish. His downfall allowed the rise of the risible, arrogant and morally bankrupt Bong-Joo to take over Sung-Chan's rightful place as head chef at a prestigious Seoul (or at least I imagine it is in Seoul...) eatery. Sung-Chan is drawn out of his self imposed exile by a cooking competition where the grand prize is some type of knife, the importance of which I unfortunately missed during the course of this (needlessly long) film, pitting him in a culinary battle royale against his old nemesis Bung-Joo who will do anything to beat him.

Recounting the numerous subplots that run through this film would be an exercise in futility since there are too many to count. Needless to say, none of them are particularly riveting or important. Rather, "Le Grand Chef" treats the viewer to a smorgasbord of poorly developed ideas, marginal humour and yawn inspiring culinary "action." The film also suffers from some truly cringe inducing melodrama, such as the heartwrending moment where Sung-Chan has to slaughter his beloved cow in order to gain an edge in the meat carving portion of the contest.

I wanted to like this movie but in the end "Le Grand Chef" was overly long, unfunny, and essentially stupid. However, Korean films in general, and K-Comedies in particular, tend to be extremely hit or miss so it didn't particularly shock me that I came away disappointed with Yun Su-Jeon's offering.