Burnt opens with Bradley Cooper’s Adam Jones telling us that he has shucked one million oysters as “penance” for the mistakes he’s made. This film should join him. Burnt is an overdone, under-seasoned recipe for failure.

Cooper established himself on our screens as Hollywood’s charming and school-boyish blue-eyed prince, and his leading performance capitalises on that in every way. His arrogance is as overcooked as the food he rejects, bordering on cringeworthy and unjustified. Burnt needed an actor of greater maturity and depth at its helm, as instead we are forced to watch Cooper try to convince us that his character is a chef with a viable chance of attaining three Michelin stars, with little success. The acting in the film overall was pleasing, with Sienna Miller, Daniel Brühl, Matthew Rhys and Emma Thompson shining enough to compensate for an only just acceptable lead. The relationships developed between the characters are interesting enough, albeit ones which we never feel compelled enough to really invest in, but the cast works well together nonetheless.

The film shies away from committing itself to a particular direction, and as a result, it loses its drive and urgency. The string of stories of drug money, upholding sobriety, recruiting new staff, single mothership, revenge, and homo- and heterosexual romantic undertones prove mildly entertaining, yet they are bland in their coherence and fail to give the film a convincing sense of purpose. It’s also too awkwardly paced most of the time to gain any momentum or build any tension. At its very basic premise of a character going against the odds to achieve culinary triumph in the face of daunting criticism, Burnt is the failed human version of Disney’s Ratatouille. The film forbids its own growth and struggles to thrive: the plot feels pressured by its own need to turn on the heat and appear charged, and the dramatically choreographed climax is undercut by a rushed and unsentimental ending.

Yet Burnt is not without redemptive qualities, albeit ones which are momentary and fleeting. The aesthetics and artistry behind the presentation of the food are wonderful, as is the intimacy of the camera angles which capture the dishes. The sensory faculties of the audience are also well addressed, with the sound editing and visuals working together with precision and seduction on screen, tied together with a soundtrack which often feels refreshingly energised and cosmopolitan. The editing does demonstrate strokes of brilliance; the contrast between the quickly-cut chaos of the kitchen and the gentle smoothness taken composing the scenes of serving the food manages to achieve snippets of impressive atmosphere. In particular, one should take note of the scene in which Cooper presents Miller’s daughter with her birthday cake: it is a moment of such sentimentality and intimacy that a chord of emotional depth is struck.

The story holds such promise to be either a slick high-end drama or gritty tale of angst, but instead John Wells’ direction leaves it swaying uncertainly between the two: we are left with a film that makes its story seem like one which never needed to be told in the first place. On the whole, Burnt can best be described as a glorified dramatisation of Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen – forgettable and lacking flavour.

Cooper’s motivating line is just too ironically fitting of the film to overlook: “If it’s not perfect, you throw it away.”