by Evan Santiago

Every movie is either a steak, spaghetti, or a cheeseburger.

A common misconception about the Cheeseburger Philosophy (a thing I just made up) is that it is a genre system. But it has nothing to do with whether a movie is a comedy, a drama, a blockbuster, an awards contender, or something made for $4 million in a field somewhere.

And while this philosophy is best used within the context of film criticism, it is certainly not about whether a movie is good or bad either. There are incredible cheeseburgers and terrible steaks. There is spaghetti that changes your life and spaghetti that should have stayed in the pot.

This thesis measures intention. It classifies the kind of experience a movie is trying to give you. Some movies want to be admired, some want to comfort you, some want to knock you backward in your seat with both hands up.

Steak. Spaghetti. Cheeseburger.

The Steak Movie

A steak movie arrives with a certain seriousness of purpose. These are your film festival darlings.

It may not always be serious in tone, but it believes deeply in the importance of what it is doing. It wants to be considered and discussed after. It wants you to notice the writing, performances, framing, and hidden choices. Even when it is somewhat entertaining, there is a degree of artistic ambition that sits at the center of the meal.

Sentimental Value (2025)

“Anatomy of a Fall” is a steak movie. “ Past Lives” is a steak movie. “ Whiplash,” “ Sing Sing,” “ Cinema Paradiso,” “ Anora,” “ Sentimental Value,” “ Hamnet.” They all have something in common. Steak movies tend to have a certain density to them. When you watch a steak movie, you are doing more than simply consuming a plot by taking pause and soaking in the craft.

A steak movie can still be funny, accessible, and loved by a massive audience, but its first instinct is never comfort or gratification. Instead, its objective is to be something great. That does not mean it always succeeds. Bad steak movies can and do exist and they’re sort of like the worst person you’ve ever been on a date with: self-important, overcooked, and desperate for you to acknowledge their contrived artistry.

Hamnet (2025)

The Spaghetti Movie

Spaghetti is comfort.

Warm, familiar, emotionally generous, and rewatchable. Nostalgia often gathers around it, sometimes over many years, sometimes instantly. It becomes the movie you put on while folding laundry.

“The Parent Trap” (and pretty much every other Nancy Meyers film) is spaghetti. “ Home Alone” is spaghetti. “ Bridesmaids” is spaghetti. “ The Devil Wears Prada” is spaghetti, but before you disagree let me add an important caveat. “ The Devil Wears Prada” is spaghetti, “ The Devil Wears Prada 2” is a cheeseburger.

The Holiday (2006) Dir. by Nancy Meyers

When we consider TDWP, we can acknowledge that the original became comforting over time because it was specific. It had a point of view and built a world that people wanted to return to. It did not come to audiences as a lesson on mastering nostalgia. It just simply became one. The sequel, however, exists inside an already established appetite. With a returning cast, a plethora of references, and a promise of seeing these characters again, it’s very clear that the craving is built into the premise. And it may be wonderful, but it is still a cheeseburger.

Another thing to consider - spaghetti is not about being small. Disney makes spaghetti all the time despite being one of the largest and hungriest entertainment companies in the world. “ Ratatouille” is spaghetti. “ Soul” is spaghetti. “ Inside Out” is spaghetti. “ Saving Mr. Banks” is spaghetti. And so are non-Disney projects such as “ Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” “ Eternity,” and “The Sheep Detectives.”

These movies can be polished or charmingly amateur, like “ Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie.” They can be expensive or they can be relatively inexpensive, like “ Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” None of that matters. What matters is that the machinery of the film does not overwhelm the feeling. A spaghetti movie feels like it was made with care rather than an intention to conquer. Its goal is not to dominate opening weekend, but to send you home a little softer than it found you.

The Cheeseburger Movie

A cheeseburger movie knows exactly what you came for. It is huge, indulgent, satisfying, immediate, American as hell, and usually extremely aware of your appetite.

Avengers: Doomsday (2026)

“ Top Gun: Maverick,” “Barbie,” every Marvel movie - these are all good examples of cheeseburger cinema. Big movie stars, big stories, and big budgets. They are engineered to make a theater full of people feel the same thing at the same time, and it does this with almost terrifying efficiency.

Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Christopher Nolan’s “ The Odyssey” are cheeseburgers too. A thoughtful cheeseburger, probably. An expertly made cheeseburger with depth, seriousness, history, and pre-destined prestige acclaim, perhaps. But still a cheeseburger. And that is not an insult.

The Odyssey (2026)

This is where the framework matters most, because we have developed a bad habit of treating “crowd-pleasing” as a lesser artistic pursuit. It isn’t. Making a great cheeseburger is difficult. Everyone thinks they can do it until they serve you something dry, synthetic, and weirdly expensive.

A movie like “ Masters of the Universe” is not bad because it is a cheeseburger. It is simply a bad cheeseburger. It’s a bad cheeseburger because it appears to mistake IP, grand visual noise, and recognition for flavor. That is the difference. A good cheeseburger understands pleasure, while a bad cheeseburger only concerns itself with appetite.

Sinners (2025)

The category is not the quality

Steak is not better than spaghetti. Spaghetti is not more soulful than a cheeseburger. Cheeseburgers are not automatically stupid. These are not tiers. A perfect cheeseburger can be better than a mediocre steak. Spaghetti can be more formally inventive than a sad cheeseburger. The category only tells you what the movie is trying to do, while the quality tells you whether or not it worked.

This is why so much movie discourse feels broken. People keep judging one meal by the standards of another. They complain that the cheeseburger was too greasy, or that the spaghetti was not revolutionary enough, or that the steak was not satisfying. They ask every movie to deliver everything at once, and then wonder why so many projects feel confused about what they are. Beloved movies usually know what they are serving.

Barbie (2023) is a cheeseburger movie

Sometimes the surface lies

“ Everything Everywhere All at Once” looks, at first, like a cheeseburger. It is maximalist, loud, kinetic, funny, strange, and built around a series of increasingly outrageous pleasures. It also has steak-level ambition. But it is spaghetti.

Beneath all the visual chaos, the movie’s dominant emotional intention is comfort. Everything bends toward tenderness, family, forgiveness, and the desperate possibility that kindness might still be enough. The spectacle is not the point.

Despite being packed with action, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a spaghetti movie

Here is the Cheeseburger Philosophy’s most important rule: you must classify the movie by its dominant emotional intention, not by its surface. A quiet movie is not automatically steak, a big movie is not automatically a cheeseburger, and a comedy is not automatically spaghetti. You have to ask what it ultimately wants from you.

Does it want your admiration?

Does it want to hold you?

Does it want to satisfy you?

My apologies if this has taken an unexpectedly intimate turn, but you get the idea.

Cheeseburger actors

Let’s discuss cheeseburger actors.

Despite suspicious patterns, a cheeseburger actor is not necessarily someone who only makes blockbusters. A cheeseburger actor is a movie star whose presence carries a promise of immediate, accessible pleasure. They make a movie feel like an event before you’ve found out what the movie even is.

Tom Cruise. Dwayne Johnson. Ryan Reynolds. Brad Pitt. Margot Robbie. Glen Powell. Timothee Chalamet and Tom Holland and Zendaya. In every case, the actor becomes part of the appetite.

Tom Holland is a cheeseburger actor

Instead of simply buying a ticket to a story, you are buying a familiar flavor delivered by someone who understands the transaction.

This is also why casting can move a movie closer to cheeseburger territory before a frame has been shot. A recognizable ensemble creates hunger in advance. Again, not bad, just… cheeseburger.

Commerce isn’t the problem

Movies cost money. That is Hollywood’s reality. Even tiny movies need an audience. Every studio wants a hit, but despite popular belief, commerce is not the contaminant. Only when commercialization becomes visible in the texture of the movie is it appropriate to make a face after taking a bite.

Audiences can feel when a film was built around a story and when it was built around a demand signal. In the best case, nostalgia emerges naturally. But, what is much more common in today’s Hollywood is this growing, disappointing realization that nostalgic entertainment is being extracted, repackaged, and handed back to us with a collectible cup.

Moana (2026) suffers at the box office from ill-intentioned and misplaced nostalgia bait.

The best cheeseburger movies do not pretend this transaction isn’t happening. They embrace it and then give us something satisfying anyway. And the best spaghetti movies understand that comfort cannot be forced. Similarly, the best steak movies understand that ambition without humanity is just expensive chewing.

Let a cheeseburger be a cheeseburger

There is a strange freedom in letting movies be what they are. Not every film needs to reinvent the medium. Sometimes you want steak - sometimes you want expensive steak and sometimes you want cheap steak. Or maybe you want spaghetti - Nonna’s homemade sauce may be legendary, but perhaps you’re feeling Chef Boyardee today. Cheeseburger might be the move, but although they are the same food, 4 Charles and McDonalds make a very different burger.

The solution to the awful habit of tearing a movie down for its involuntary nature can be very simple. A cheeseburger is but a cheeseburger. A steak is only a steak. And what is spaghetti if not spaghetti? Just like we approach a meal, we must learn to judge film not by its comparison to an entirely different offering, but against the promise of its own form, and the quality of its execution.

Know what you ordered.