Spinning Plates

This is a documentary about three 'unique' restaurants... although it doesn't go out of its way to explain why these three restaurants. You could have thrown three darts at a map of the US, and found any three restaurants at those locations and made a similar movie.

The three here are Alinea in Chicago, Breitbach's in Iowa and La Cocina de Gabby in Tuscon. We get treated to a mixture of talking heads and slice of life style scenes. There is no real narrative flow, just lots of stories and shots of them all working and talking about how great their respective restaurants are.

As such... it's hard to get into it, as there's nothing to get into. We are just seeing three separate restaurants, and these could easily have been edited together episodes from 'Spotlight on a Random Restaurant'. Director Joseph Levy just lets people tell their own stories, and I'm sure he likes this, but I feel like there's purpose missing.

A movie you might watch if you are into restaurants or foods or such, but otherwise nothing particular to recommend.

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