I’ve been working seven days a week until the guys and I finally took a little downtime for the July 4th holiday, so I finally got some free time to see a movie I’ve been looking forward to for some time: Jon Favreau’s Chef.
I’ve always been fascinated by Favreau’s variety of work as a director, writer, and producer. Favreau’s resume includes directing many big budget films such as the Iron Man series and The Avengers as well as acting turns in everything from his own indie classic Swingers to his part as Manny Riskin in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.
Chef takes Favreau back to his roots with a smaller budget and a story-centric rather than effects-centric film that, like Swingers 18 years ago, or like Alexander Payne’s 2004 film Sideways, begins with a minimal promotional budget and low expectations but which will end up being a film that people will love and remember long after its initial run. Favreau is Chef‘s writer, director, and lead actor.
Today, there are less and less movies like Chef with adult stories and rich characters and, unlike so many dark indie flicks, a story line that ends up as inspiring and not the least bit cynical. It’s a road film, it’s a buddy film, it’s a film of despair followed by believable hope and inspiration, with a Hollywood ending you rarely see in indie films that makes you leaving the theater feeling great. And hungry.
In a summer of so many big-budget blockbusters, go watch Chef and be amazed by how many stars are in it and how great their performances are. In addition to the pitch-perfect Favreau, sit back and enjoy great performances from Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johanssen, Robert Downey Jr., John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, and yes, even Sofia Vergara, who dials it down from her over-the-top persona on Modern Family to provide a nuanced performance as Inez, the ex-wife of Favreau’s character, Chef Carl Casper.
But I’ve left the best for last. The real star of this film is someone who barely appears in it, Los Angeles food truck pioneer and, perhaps, my favorite Angeleno of all, Chef Roy Choi. Although the film is written by Jon Favreau, the spirit and essence of Chef Roy, a co-producer of Chef, permeates every frame of this film. If I didn’t know of his involvement in this film, I would have guessed it for sure. And if you don’t stay for the credits, you will miss actual footage of Chef Roy showing Jon Favreau how to look believable making a gastropub version of a grilled cheese sandwich. The food porn in this film alone makes it worth watching. And Chef Roy is the undisputed king of the food porn industry through his culture-bending gastrofood trucks, restaurants, and his book L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food.
Don’t let me spoil this one for you by regurgitating the plot here. If you have been following our own story of what it’s like going it alone as entrepreneurs, you will love this film. If you like story-driven films about adults, if you are fascinated by the culture of food, chefs and the food truck phenomenon, if social networking is part of your everyday existence, and if you’d like to see an indie film in which you don’t feel like killing yourself after watching two dark hours, then Chef demands to be seen.
Like Swingers and Sideways before it, Chef is the surprise film of this season, not because we don’t know how good Jon Favreau is, but because we don’t expect the now sequel and franchise-obsessed film industry to let us have more films like this.
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