Foodies

Food films often spark a viewer's appetite, but that isn't necessarily the case with the documentary Foodies. By the time a master chef is holding a grilled beetle between two chopsticks while explaining that a mushroom growing in the insect's gut and excreted through its nose is a pricey delicacy, you know that you're in truly rarified culinary territory. But somebody has to try out the more arcane dishes of the world and write about them, and those lucky souls would be the food bloggers at the center of this film directed by Thomas Jackson, Charlotte Landelius, and Henrik Stockare. Early on, the documentary sets a pattern that includes traipsing after these critics as they jet around the world and eat (and take pictures of food), a formula that becomes so redundant that not even the significant differences of nationality, race, age, and gender between these bloggers give viewers a varied experience. While many dishes appear to be interesting, nothing is shot in a particularly mouthwatering way. Foodies is well traveled, hopping between continents and countries, but the most compelling visual material involves some of the stranger places that critics eat, including a parking garage, and a grim building somewhere in Lithuania on a winter night. A few moments of tension arise when some chefs question the value of food writers, and it's interesting that certain restaurants give bloggers such a hard-sell that it borders on imposing. But as a film, Foodies loses its flavor long before it's over. Optional. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)