Chef Movie Review

"Everything that's good that's happened to me in my life came because of that. I might not do everything great in my life. Okay, I'm not perfect. I'm not the best husband and I'm sorry if I wasn't the best father. But I'm good at this. and I want share this with you. i wanna teach you what i learned. I get to touch peoples lives with what I do. And it keeps me going and I love it. and I think if you give it a shot you might love it too."

-Carl Casper

Chef was sitting in my Netflix queue for weeks up until I watched it recently. I heard mostly positive things about the film and finally sat down to watch it. I definitely have mixed feeling on the film but by the time it came to a close I had a smile on my face and did not regret watching it. It's a feel-good movie that takes some liberties with the story telling and doesn't always make complete sense. The film is directed by and stars Jon Favreau, a chef who loses his job at a restaurant and has to figure out what he wants to do with his life while keeping it together for his son. 

For starters I thoroughly enjoyed the cast in this film, despite some of them being under-utilized. Scarlett Johansson for example played a pretty important role in convincing Carl to take control of his life, but she had so little screen time and I was left feeling like she had more to offer. John Leguizamo (Martin) and Bobby Cannavale (Tony) are both chefs that assist Carl during the first half of the movie when he was still working at the restaurant. They're both hilarious, constantly cracking jokes and busting chops but at the end of the day they are also great cooks and have Carl's back. Their boss Riva, played by Dustin Hoffman, who owns the restaurant is overbearing and controlling and doesn't allow Carl to be creative with the dishes he's making. They get wind that a famous food blogger with thousands of followers is coming to the restauarnt and Carl whips up an amazing menu. When Riva finds out he shuts Carl down and forces him to stick with his basic menu. The critic tears Carl's food apart in his review and blatantly embarrasses him on the Internet. Here is where Johansson's character comes in and consoles Carl and we get a peek into their friendship, which is quite nice. Now since Favreau and Johansson have worked together previously, most notably in the second Iron Man film, I feel like she got the part because of the friendship. I mean in the sense that it wasn't a hard role to play, at all, and I feel that a lesser known actress could have played the role just as well. But hey, I love seeing her on screen so you won't see me complaining.

We also meet Carl's son and ex wife who is played by Sofia Vergara, another beautiful woman. Favreau obviously thought this through when he wrote, directed and starred in this film! We don't ever really find out much about her character other than the fact that she's very successful, loves her son, and has a healthy friendship with Carl. We never even find out why they got divorced in the first place. Anyway, the best parts of the film for me were the scenes between Carl and his son Percy. They played off of each other well and the father-son bond felt real. After the rough review from the blogger, Percy being a young kid in the 21st century has both a phone and a Twitter account, and is following the news surrounding his father. Percy convinces Carl to make a Twitter and it all goes up in flames from there. Favreau does a good job at playing the modern dad who is oblivious to the inner workings of social media. We all have one of those in the family! Carl believes he's sending the blogger a private message, and calls him out on the nasty review. Come morning, Carl has over a thousand followers due to the fact that he tweeted at the blogger publicly. So here's one of my recurring issues with the film;Twitter. I appreciate the fact that it was one of the tools that really helped develop the story, but it was Twitter this Twitter that, tweet this tweet that. There were even little blue animated birds that would fly across the screen when something was tweeted. It at times felt like a huge advertisement for Twitter, which I wasn't really a fan of.

So after the social media war erupts, Carl invites the blogger back to the restaurant for round two, where Riva again shuts him down and Carl decides to quit. Now Carl was in this state of limbo where he had no idea where to go with his life and wasn't being the best father to Percy. Conveniently he had the gorgeous Scarlett Johansson whispering to him in one ear, and his strangely loving ex-wife in the other. It's hard for me to feel bad for the guy! So Carl flies down to Florida with his ex-wife and Percy where he meets up with another one of her ex-husbands, Marvin, who could help him out with a possible business. Marvin is played by no one other than Robert Downey Jr.! I told you, just getting the Iron Man band back together. Another small role played a superstar, that wasn't entirely necessary. But it was hilarious to watch an R-rated Tony Stark in action. He gets an old beaten down food truck from Marvin and with the help of Percy and Martin, who just drops everything for Carl, they transform the truck into a beautiful, fully functional food truck. It bothered me how they didn't really develop Martin's character, and then he just flies from L.A. to Miami on whim and quits his job back in L.A. But I got over it. The three of them drive from Miami back to L.A. through numerous major cities and the food truck is a hit. Between their delicious Cubano sandwiches and Percy's expertise in social media advertising, aka just tweeting what city they'll be in, people lined up around the block for the truck.

Another standout part of this film for me were the cooking scenes. They were just amazing. Reminded me a lot of the recent television show Hannibal, where the cooking scenes make you sad because you can't cook as well. Carl made a grilled cheese look like a masterpiece and I loved every second of it. I'd be lying if I said I didn't for a split second think of switching to a culinary major. Needless to say I went and ate as soon as I finished the movie, but was immediatley dissapointed because it wasn't as good as I was hoping coming off of this movie. Overall I enjoyed Chef. I connected with the characters easily and like I said before it was a very feel-good movie. I laughed a lot and I was rooting for Carl the whole time. The ending was a little unexpected and I could have used some development on that aspect, even an explanation. It kind of just happened and you're expected to accept it. If you're looking for a masterpiece then you're not going to find it in Chef. But by no means is this a bad movie. I watched it with a few friends and as a fan of film it was entertaining. It had heart, it had comedy, and it had a fun story and sometimes that's enough to be happy with a film. I give Chef a 7 out of 10.