Movies / Movie Reviews

Le Grand Chef at Fantasia 2008

By Al Kratina
July 12, 2008 - 22:53

Le Grand Chef
2007, South Korea
Director: Jeon Yun-su
Screenplay: Shin Dong-ik
Cast: Kim Kang-woo, Lee Ha-na, Lim Won-hie
Producers: Lee Sung-hoon
Distributor: Show East

I love to cook. But pretty much the only things I can make are grilled cheese sandwiches and methamphetamine, provided I can find good Jarslberg and enough pseudoephedrine. Which is why I love to watch cooking on TV.

So it stands to reason that I’d enjoy Le Grand Chef, which is essentially a giant cooking show mixed with Korean comedy. The problem is, if you mix Korean comedy with anything, what comes out is not going to taste good. It’s going to make your tongue numb, your eyes crossed, and your mind very confused.

Le Grand Chef follows two cooking school rivals, one of whom accidentally poisons the entire staff with a poorly cleaned pufferfish. Years later, both are pitted against each other in a competition to determine South Korea’s best chef.

Like most Korean comedies, Le Grand Chef apes the most basic of Hollywood clichés, and then accidentally gets really weird in the middle. In this particular film, there’s a particularly lengthy middle section in which Seong-Chan, our hero, graphically butchers his pet cow for about twenty minutes, assuring that only audience members with mild to severe anti-social personality disorder continue to root for his victory.

Aside from that, the film is a standard light comedy, neither remarkable nor particularly notable. Strangely, the same can be said for my cooking.

Rating: 6 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12