Chef Reviews

This movie was not really a priority for me but since it was soon to be removed from HBO, I thought I might as well check it out. After directing quite a few blockbusters with some various end-results, Jon Favreau decided to go for something smaller this time. Well, it turned out to be a fine watch, in fact, it was easily one of the best movies I have seen about a chef and his restaurant. Indeed, the food was really gorgeous to look at, I don’t think I have ever seen anything like this before (maybe in ‘Yin shi nan nu’ but it was ages ago since I saw it) and the cooking process has never been displayed better than in this movie. I think my favorite moment was actually when he prepared the grilled cheese sandwich for his kid. It had totally nothing to do with the actual story but it looked just so awesome. Furthermore, I really liked this main character, Jon Favreau gave himself a very nice role and I believe he gave here the best performance of his career. Unfortunately, pretty much everything else in the movie was not really impressive, I’m afraid. Indeed, the story was really pedestrian and generic. I mean, it is the second movie in a row in which I saw a bogus family drama with the main character being divorced (FYI, I saw ‘San Andreas’ yesterday). Why does all these guys always have to be divorced? It is just a cheap way to add some fake conflict to a story. The other thing that disappointed me was the fact that, even though the whole thing was about the main character getting a food truck, he actually drops it at the end to work again in a regular restaurant. Then, finally, the last thing that bothered me is that, except for the main character, all the other characters were rather poorly developed and some of them, like Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr. and Dustin Hoffman should have been provided more screen-time or removed completely. To conclude, even though it didn’t completely work, I thought it was still a decent feelgood feature and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.