‘The Dinner’ Review: Laura Linney, Steve Coogan Cram Too Much on Their Plate

Oren Moverman (“The Messenger”) overserves the ideas in this topical thriller-satire

The Dinner

There are about three or four rich and provocative films happening on top of each other in Oren Moverman’s “The Dinner,” and any one of them — hell, any two! — would make a fine stand-alone work in its own right. But in its current state, this discordant mix of tones, themes and performance styles just doesn’t quite add up.

At once a darkly comic social satire, a pitch-black moral thriller and an earnest plea to recognize mental illness, “The Dinner” is a seven-layer dip overflowing with compelling individual ingredients that, when mixed together, make the finished dish awfully difficult to digest.

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