Fav’s latest serves up a view into the world of good food.
Chef is one of the best films I have seen all summer. It was directed by Jon Favreau and was released on May 9, 2014. It is rated R, was released by Open Road Films and has a running time of 114 minutes.
I was in no rush to see this film, and only finally watched it because nothing good came out this past week so I thought I might as well give it a shot. But from the moment it started to the last scene, I loved this movie.
The films starts with Carl Casper working in a nice restaurant in Los Angeles. He enjoys his job, and is very excited because one night a prestigious food critic named Ramsey Michel is coming and Casper wants to make a meal that he will remember. But this becomes impossible when his boss says he will serve him the menu he wants him to make, and if he doesn’t like it that is too bad.
The night that Michel comes, he tries the food and gives Casper a bad review. This hurts and angers him because he knows he could have done better if he had only been allowed to make the food he wanted to that night. So in his anger Casper sends a Twitter message to Michel and challenges him to come back to the restaurant. Casper says he will make a special menu just for him, so Michel agrees to come back. But before Casper can make this menu, his boss finds out about the menu change and says he will not be doing that. Casper and his boss get in an argument and Casper decides to go home.
He tries to relax, but Casper goes to the restaurant that night and yells at the food critic. This gets him fired. For the next few months things are tough for Casper, but he has become a popular sensation on the internet. Everyone has seen his video of the yelling match at Michel, and he has a lot of followers on Twitter now. The bad news is no one will hire him, so he has little money and isn’t doing the job he loves.
On a whim he decides to talk to the first husband of Inez named Marvin who gets him a food truck. It is beat up, in bad shape and needs a lot of work done to it. Casper decides to fix it up, and his son helps him which is a bit odd because before this they hadn’t done much together as father and son. Casper’s friend Martin quits his job and agrees to go with him across the country to sell food on this truck, and his son also gets to work with him.
They all decide to go from Miami all the way back to Los Angeles, and will try to sell some food on the truck along the way. Will this truck be a hit? And will it do some good for the relationship with his son? And how will they get any business?
The film stars Jon Favreau as Carl Jasper, Sofia Vergara as Inez his ex-wife, John Leguizamo as Martin one of Casper’s friends, Scarlett Johannsen as Molly who is the hostess at the LA restaurant, Oliver Platt as Ramsey Michel the online food critic, Bobby Cannavale as Tony another friend of Casper, Dustin Hoffman as Rive the owner of the LA restaurant, Robert Downey Jr as Marvin who is Inez’s first husband and Emjay Anthony as Carl and Inez’s young son.
The film has a lot of good things in it. The plot is original, and it is something many people can relate to. The father being too busy for a son happens too often these days, and it was something i could relate to growing up. There is also a wonderful soundtrack, that has a spicy Latin feel to it. In many scenes the music not only brought it to life but each song really fit well, and it was easy to tell that thought had been put in to make sure it wasn’t overdone and made sense.
There was also a cool special effect with Twitter, when a message was posted the viewer got to see it fly off to somewhere else, and this gave it a special power. When Carl’s son posted something on Twitter, you could tell the joy and happiness he felt just getting to work with his dad.
Each locale also was lively, and it was great to see this relationship between Carl and his son go from near non existent to so strong that it becomes apparent that Carl needs him in his life. By the end of the film a great decision is made, and this makes for a wonderful ending that I won’t spoil here.
Since this film came out, it has made $19.4 million in the US alone. I am pained to say this film hasn’t made a giant splash in theaters yet, and it is a shame because it really is well done.
If you are a fan of food, you should definitely go see this movie. If you are a fan of Jon Favreau this is a film that is worth spending the money to see. It is unique and full of heart that most films lack recently. Trust me, you will like this movie.