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Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (45) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (27) | Rotten (18)
For those of us who don't have an deep interest in freeze-drying, 'El Bulli' is astonishingly, sub-'Masterchef' dull.
You leave "Cooking in Progress" with respect for a man who followed his vision, and with fascination at the idea of food as artistic expression.
If you're passionate (and open-minded) about food, you'll be fascinated.
If your idea of fine dining is pumpkin meringue sandwiches, bone marrow tartare with oysters, tea shrimp with caviar anemones, and ice vinaigrette with tangerines and green olive, then by all means make haste to El Bulli.
Offers a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes at the Spanish restaurant hailed as the most influential eatery in the world.
We're made to marvel at slow-cooked, freeze-dried, unappetizingly bagged food, the way some mushrooms, when delicately sliced, evoke fruit and some crustaceans resemble side-sleeping snooze-bar slappers.
Wetzel's documentary never really gets under Adrià's skin - but the creation of the frozen, juiced, glossy surfaces of the food is fascinating.
Not only does the food look barely edible but the film is remarkably unilluminating about the history of the restaurant, the characters or those who ate there.
The result is hypnotic rather than instructive and, like TV cookery programmes, it's a cinematic experience resembling lap dancing overseen by a duenna.
There is no doubting that even this overlong examination of culinary expertise and experimentation will become a classic.
There are enough outbreaks of culinary weirdness to keep true enthusiasts distracted.
As an advertisement for the restaurant, this works well, but the issues - the art of cuisine and cuisine as art - are not discussed very thoroughly.
Taking the word "documentary" incredibly literally, EL BULLI: COOKING IN PROGRESS is a document of the food development process at a cutting edge Spanish restaurant. The chef closes the restaurant for six months so he and his team can create the molecular gastronomy wonders that makes his restaurant so strange and popular. But because the film is unfiltered by the filmmaker in any way, he just points the camera at them and watches, very little emerges, except for the fact that this food seems very strange, and as far as I can tell, kind of off-putting. There's time spent in the lab, then time spent at the restaurant premiering the dishes, but all I learned is that weird food can be served in tiny little bites and still look beautiful but sort of inedible. In the end it left me wanting to cook some Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and watch CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS - food and a documentary, American style.
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