Chef is a great experience. While it’s not without its faults, it’s clearly a passion project for Jon Favreau (who wrote, directed, and stars), and that passion permeates every frame of the film. The food is shot so gorgeously that every hackneyed blog on the Internet has called Chef “food porn,” the dialogue and performances are all freewheeling and natural, and the soundtrack – a blend of soul, ska, reggae, and Cuban jazz – adds energy and vitality to the proceedings. It’s great to have Favreau back in Swingers mode after his detour into blockbuster country with the first two Iron Man films and Cowboys & Aliens.
Favreau plays Carl Casper, the head chef at a tony Brentwood eatery. When the restaurant’s owner (Dustin Hoffman) refuses to let him try his new menu out on an important critic (Oliver Platt), Carl storms out. He’s in a rut creatively, feeling lost, but finds himself on a trip to Miami with his ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara) and son Percy (newcomer Emjay Anthony), where he takes a meeting with Marvin, another ex-husband of Inez played by Robert Downey Jr., who gives Carl a food truck. (It says a lot about Favreau’s status among A-listers that he can get stars like Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson to appear in roles that are basically cameos.) Carl, along with his former sous chef Martin (a nicely restrained and surprisingly likable John Leguizamo) take off on a road trip, driving the food truck from Miami to LA, with Percy along for the ride.
The plot of Chef seems like a pretty clear analogy for Favreau’s career; at one point, he is told by Hoffman to “play your hits,” and it’s hard to disassociate the character of Carl from the actor playing him, who also happened to direct the Iron Man 2 and Cowboys & Aliens to lukewarm receptions. Favreau, like Carl, had to get back to his roots and find happiness in what he was doing. And if what Favreau wants to do now is more movies like Chef, I’m all for it.
He clearly has the cooking chops too – there are multiple instances of the camera panning from Carl’s face to his hands, just so we know it’s actually Favreau at work. Minute detail is paid to the preparation and service of, say, beignets in New Orleans or barbecue in Texas. Favreau obviously has a huge amount of respect for these people and their craft, and Chef works as a joyous celebration of culinary genius, which doesn’t have to be showy or extravagant; it just has to taste good.
There are some minor quibbles. There’s definitely some wish-fulfillment going on here – I mean, Carl looks like Jon Favreau and gets romantic advances from Sofia Vergara and Scarlett Johansson? Additionally, Bobby Cannavale appears as Tony, who gets a lot of great lines and then essentially disappears from the film. And the ending was a little too neat for me.
But will any of that detract from the experience of seeing Chef? Hell no. This was a movie I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing, but it turned out to be one of my favorite filmgoing experiences of this year. The highest praise I can give Chef is this: even though I hate cooking (loathe it, really), Chef made me want to get in the kitchen.
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