‘Eat the Rich’ Difficult to Digest

Is there a new British trend in movies about cannibalism? Hard on the heels, of “Consuming Passions”--in which corpses mixed with candy created a new culinary rage--comes “Eat the Rich” (selected theaters) in which, indeed, the rich are eaten.

They’re the specialty of the house in a posh new restaurant, taken over by a revolutionary misfit Gang of Four: gay ex-waiter Alex (Lanah Pellay), bouncer Ron (Ron Tarr), piano player Jimmy (Jimmy Fagg) and pregnant prostitute Fiona (Fiona Richmond). This unique establishment--which has its old customers on the bill of fare, and features chaotic cookery and surly service--somehow becomes the rage of the London elite: a masochistic upper crust apparently headed for the gravy. The movie gets high points for irreverence and daring. It doesn’t seem to have any sacred cows at all--if it had any, they’d probably wind up on the menu, too, as holy hamburger.

But, somehow, “Eat the Rich” never quite captures the right comic tone. Sometimes it’s too offhand: There’s a Paul McCartney cameo gag that whizzes by so fast, his presence may not even register. The movie never seems as funny as it should be, and the audacity begins to have a hollow ring. Something is missing: a lightness of touch, a crisp pace, an inner moral thread. Or maybe the right sauce.

It’s co-written and directed by Peter Richardson, of Britain’s comedy team the Comic Strip. But, this time, he and his fellow Strippers--Robbie Coltrane, French and Saunders, Adrian Edmondson--appear only in cameos. It’s probably a mistake. They’re all appealing, deft performers, and here, the lead roles are taken by performers not so deft, and appealing mostly in their sheer, roaring outrageousness.

Pellay, one-time female impersonator turned transsexual, plays the gay British-Indian waiter, Alex (a role written for her when she was still a man). And longtime movie stunt man and pub owner Nosher Powell appears as the reactionary boor of a Home Secretary, Nosher--a constant beer guzzler who never wears a tie, and is prone to relieving himself against the ministry wall. They’re colorful figures but all their cards are quickly played or hidden. Pellay minces and bitches incessantly, and Powell--despite a majestic, burly presence--has an East End burr that’s nearly impenetrable.

Writer-director Richardson goes further than he did in his previous feature, “Supergrass”; he’s trying for an unthrottled satiric savagery. But there’s still something grim about his style; it seems to hover between a tight-lipped action genre mood and something more unbuttoned and comic. “Eat the Rich” (MPAA-rated R, for sex, violence and language) occasionally stirs your appetite, but it’s neither a rich meal nor a juicy one.