Lots of quick cuts and kitchen close-ups - of gas stoves, buttery saucepans and stock characters concentrating preciously on haute cuisine - and lots of unmoving melodrama.
"Burnt" is overcooked. If that sounds like a glib way to describe an entertainment about the comeback of a celebrity chef, it's also perfectly suited to a movie that wears its glossiness as a badge of honor.
It's all too familiar, too rudimentary, and while the kitchen they're working in is top-of-the-line the meal they ultimately prepare isn't that much better than a Denny's breakfast left under the heat lamps a few minutes too many.
Bound to inspire headlines full of tiresome kitchen wordplay: "half-baked," "underdone," "lacks seasoning." What it really is, though, is late for dinner.
