Movie Review #17: Chef

Chef (2014)
Director: Jon Favreau
Writer(s): Jon Favreau
Starring: Jon Favreau, Sofia Vergara, Emjay Anthony

Some people watch American Idol. Some watch Jerry Springer. Some watch Access Hollywood. Some watch Kate Plus Eight. Everyone has his or her television guilty pleasure, a show one recognizes for its abysmal quality but a show one watches anyways for the pure enjoyment of the experience. My own guilty pleasure: Man v. Food. Certainly, it feels as if one gains fifteen pounds just by watching the show (so... much... grease), but the show's premise and execution are undeniably enjoyable. Indeed, I love many of these "foodie" shows; Food Network is on regular rotation in my house. Thus, when I'm called to review a film like Chef, I need to remove myself from the equation and review it without my own biases finding their way in. And let's just say my biases helped me ignore a whole bunch of problems when I was watching this movie.

Jon Favreau plays Carl Casper, a prominent chef in the Los Angeles area who has fallen into a rut of cooking stagnation at a restaurant owned by the hyper-traditionalist Riva (Dustin Hoffman). This does not go unnoticed by a prominent food critic played by Oliver Platt. Disheartened by the scathing review, Favreau takes solace with his son (Emjay Anthony) who introduces him to the world of Twitter. Casper, having never used Twitter before, delivers his own scathing comments to the critic, going so far as to invite him back to the restaurant so he might taste some new flavors. Riva gets in the way, though, forcing Casper to stick to the old menu. Carl quits, and, in a rage, insults the critic vehemently - causing internet chaos to ensue. In order to get out of the limelight, Casper buys a food truck called El Jefe and goes across the country making Cuban cuisine: food he is truly passionate about. With the truck, he is able to re-bond with his estranged son and even his divorced wife (Sofia Vergara).

Aside from my love of cooking shows and cooking-related media, there are many things to like about Chef. The two prominent cameos of the movie - Dustin Hoffman and Robert Downey Jr. - are both fantastic. Hoffman proves to be one of the most important characters, despite his ten minutes of screen time, delivering yet another great performance (since when has he not been good?). The scene with Robert Downey Jr. is the funniest in the movie, with Downey Jr. playing Casper's ex's ex. The scene really highlights the awkward comedy in just the right way. Favreau himself does a great job as Casper; he really brings a good color to the role. John Leguizamo does a nice job as his sous chef of sorts. Emjay Anthony is surprisingly tolerable as the son, even if his delivery is somewhat flat. I actually really appreciated his dynamic with his father. It's not comparable to a movie like Boyhood, which, to its defense, frames the entire film around the relationship between the boy and his parents. But it still works, and that's what matters.

Perhaps the most interesting element of the film is the interplay between Carl's traditional approach to cooking and the dynamic advertising of the Internet. Carl's lack of familiarity with the Internet leads him to make some pretty bone-headed mistakes, mistakes easily avoidable with just the slightest bit of Internet savvy. Certainly, the effects used to display the Internet in Chef are highly reminiscent of Sherlock, but they do work effectively. We see Casper and his son grow into Internet mega-stars through appropriate use of modern trends. The movie demonstrates that classic technique and the modern age are not irreconcilable. It's a good message to send, one that's particularly resonant with both children and adults.

It's unfortunate these nice elements are all but drowned out by terrible direction, editing, writing, and characterization. I was able to ignore most of Chef's problems when I first watched it, but just a day of contemplation was enough for me to seriously reconsider giving this film a positive review. One of the film's biggest issues is its fixation on food. How is this a problem in a film about food? Instead of using food as an engine for greater ideas (see Ratatouille), Chef takes time out of the movie to explicitly explain how to make each and every dish featured in the film. Then, the film feels the need to make a montage of Carl and his crew cooking the dishes thirteen times over. Normally, movies are interrupted by montages. While watching Chef, I thought I was watching montages interrupted by the movie! Thus, the movie enters a state of tedium really quickly. Viewers like me might be able to watch two guys cooking all day, but the rest of the viewing audience must be bored out of its wits!

Even worse is Chef's treatment of its women. Chef isn't a misogynistic movie or a sexist movie, but it has no idea what to do with its female characters. The Sofia Vergara character is absent for almost the entire movie, serving no purpose other than to shuffle Carl into one line of cooking or another. The two display little to no chemistry. Then, at the end of the movie, they re-marry for no apparent reason! The most we get is a jumbled "I love you" over the phone, a quote intended to be a Freudian slip. I don't buy it. I don't buy any of this film's romance. The other prominent female character in the movie, a hostess played by Scarlet Johansson, has even less to do. Her relationship with Carl seems to be going somewhere in the beginning of the movie, but she just lets him go off and work on his food truck without even saying goodbye. Thus, every second of screen time the two share feels completely wasted.

The final nail in Chef's coffin comes from one of the biggest plot holes in recent film history. At the beginning of the movie, the food critic lambasts Casper for not having any creativity in his food. He does not insult the quality of the food (maybe a little, but not too much); he insults the stagnation of the food. Casper is not being the original the critic wants him to be. At the end of the movie, the critic bankrolls Casper because he falls in love with Casper's food truck dishes. Casper has got his passion for cooking back, and he's making food that he loves. The problem: the El Jefe food truck makes traditional Cuban cuisine. It's not new. It's not daring. It's delicious, but it's not experimental or pushing the boundaries of flavor. Thus, the food truck should make no difference on the critic's mind. The problem was never Casper's lack of passion; it was his lack of originality. The food truck does not change this fact. As a result, the entire third act of Chef makes zero sense. The resolution feels cheap and out of the blue, not to mention inconsistent with the initial conflict of the movie.

While Chef may have entertained me, I can't see many other people walking out of the theatre feeling satisfied. It's a two-hour montage with a hastily written story thrown in here and there. Its characters feel more like plot devices than actual three-dimensional human beings. The food, while succulent, doesn't serve a symbolic purpose. Though Chef has some interesting ideas and a nice message hiding behind its weak exterior, they cannot resuscitate an almost stillborn movie. It's far from the worst movie of the year (cough, cough, Transformers 4, cough cough), but it's certainly not a good one. While I'd much rather watch Chef than Edge of Tomorrow, I cannot, in good taste, give it a thumbs up.

Recommendation: If you have two hours to kill and you've got food on the brain, maybe Chef is worth your time. Personally, I'd search the Travel channel to find re-runs of Man v. Food, but to each his own. But, with so many other movies out right now (Magic in the Moonlight), Chef should not be high up on anyone's list.

I give Chef a 3.6 out of 10.