Starring: John Favreau, Emjay Anthony, John Leguizamo
Once feted as an extraordinary rising talent, Carl Casper (Favreau) is now head chef at an LA restaurant, often preparing popular dishes that he has no passion in preparing. After a bad review, Carl loses his temper and becomes an internet laughingstock, but now with his own food truck, he takes his cooking on the road.
No relation to the Lenny Henry sitcom (at least no relation that I know of), Chef is directed by and stars John Favreau who, despite a fairly long career is probably best known for his work (directing and acting) with the Iron Man movies. It's fair to say that Chef is a heavy contrast to those movies, going away from the glitzy Hollywood productions and for something a little more low-key in flavour, although Favreau's Hollywood connections bring some star-power to a fairly amusing little movie.
Favreau dominates this picture as it is very much the story of his character, Carl Casper. It would be tempting to call this film a vanity project with Favreau showcasing a skill for cooking and despite not fitting the traditional body image Hollywood has for lotharios, actually having an impressive romantic history, but Favreau is an engaging and endearing enough a presence on screen that this is forgivable. Amongst the support we get decent performances and Favreau shows off his show business connections as we see Dustin Hoffman, John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Oliver Platt, Russell Peters, Sofia Vergara, Scarlett Johannson (take note of when I mentioned Carl's impressive romantic history with those last two) and Robert Downey Jr., some just turning up for a scene or two.
Beyond the big names however, this is a movie about food and you'd be wise to not go into this film without having eaten something beforehand. Fail to do that and rest assured you will get hungry as shot after shot simply delicious food is pushed in front of your eyes. The food is so much the focus that it seems that the characterisations suffer by comparison. There's never much sense of what many of the characters are really like and their motivations change more to suit the story than to suit the character. The film is thematically rich (beyond food there's also elements dancing around latino culture, social media to the point it looks like a Twitter ad at times, father and son relationships and the world of criticism, reminiscent of Ratatouille) but ultimately, we get something that whilst a little bland at times does have some flavour, a great presentation and a hint of spice. Ultimately, a satisfying meal of a movie.
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