The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival entered its second weekend with a Spotlight Presentation on a subject that Wisconsinites clearly love, cheese. Or in this case, a movie about competing in the world championship of cheesemongering, THE BIG CHEESE. If it didn’t sellout every seat at the Oriental Theatre, it came awfully close. To ensure that the audience was in a good mood, audience members were also given a small cheese sampler box from Wisconsin Cheese.
My grandparents were dairy farmers. My father worked in an ice cream factory. I earned money in college working in an ice cream warehouse. Dairy is in my blood. I love cheese, I have referred to myself as a cheese snob, and I was an easy mark. Even without the totally unnecessary bribery. Judging by the crowd reaction, the whole theater was on the side of the movie.
The problem with competition based films is that you have to have stakes beyond winning. Otherwise, you’re probably better off with a mockumentary by Christopher Guest. Heck, Nigel Tufnel has retired to the life of a cheesemonger in SPINAL TAP 2, so the parody isn’t hard to conceive. SPELLBOUND overcame that problem, and has been vastly influential since, through the charisma and humanity of its competitors.
Director Sara Joe Wolansky solves the riddle of stakes in two ways. First, emphasizing how it matters to everyone participating that the USA be seen as a worthy peer of the World and win this competition for the respect it will earn. Everyone enjoys an underdog story, after all. Second, she focusses on how much it means to the coach of the team, Adam Moskowitz, and how it’s seen as a personal mission of redemption after struggles with addiction and depression. Everyone enjoys a redemption story too.
With those two strong supports established, the movie proceeds in ways that will be familiar to all of us by now. There’s a qualifying competition from which two competitors will be chosen. In qualifying, there’s one clear favorite, Lilith Spencer, who is the closest thing to a famous cheesemonger in America. And once that competition is finished, we move on to preparation for and the Mondial du Fromage and more in depth profiles of the two competitors.
It’s a familiar structure at this point in a world full of cooking competition shows. But both competitors are likable and it would clearly make a difference in their lives and allow them added avenues of financing. Yes, being a world champion would make you more likely to get a small business loan. But, cheesemongers are an introverted lot. Luckily, Adam Moscowitz is a larger than life personality. He’s profane. He has an interesting story. He’s driven. And this competition means a lot to him.
And Moscowitz makes a tremendous difference to the film, injecting energy whenever the film needs it. Plus, the film goes cross-country and international so it’s almost a travelogue of sorts, which keeps the film visually interesting. No just sitting around a kitchen working on cheese here. I wish that the film got a little more into cheese itself, its history, the different types, how its made, etc. Everyone here loves cheese, but that gets a little downplayed in the movie. The biggest flaw of cooking shows is that you can’t taste the dish. That’s a similar flaw here. The film chooses to edit the oral presentation of cheese that both competitors have to do as part of the competition, and I feel that cutting it does a disservice to why they all are there and kind of takes away from judging the competition ourselves. The fact is that the scoring system is never really explained and we have no idea where the competitors rank does up the tension for the announcement of winners, but kind of undercuts the competition itself. The rules of SPELLBOUND are clear, miss a letter and you’re out, but the opaque rules of THE BIG CHEESE kind of mean that anything can happen and every little decision our competitors make is lost of any significance so that we only have the final results to look forward to.
None of that is fatal to the success of the movie, only that we’re missing some elements that could really elevate it. THE BIG CHEESE is entertaining, colorful, and a real crowd-pleaser with a larger than life presence at its center. Those are all reasons to recommend to go see THE BIG CHEESE. Go out and enjoy some cheese afterwards too, there are options in Milwaukee.
The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival runs from April 16, 2026 until May 30, 2026. THE BIG CHEESE plays twice more during the festival; Sunday, April 26,2026 at 10:00 am at the Downer Theatre, and Wednesday, April 29, 2026 at 3:45 pm at the Downer Thearre. Tickets to THE BIG CHEESE and other upcoming films can be purchased at MKEFILM.ORG.
