So I finally got a chance to watch Chef last week, and I absolutely loved it. While not a perfect movie, it's a passionate movie about somebody's passion for the things in his life, and it was an incredibly enjoyable experience.
The basic story is that actor/director/writer Jon Favreau stars as our main character, Carl Casper, a well respected Chef working in an upscale restaurant. While Carl is shown to be passionate about the food he makes and wanting to take things in new directions, the owner of the restaurant is constantly stifling him. This all comes to a head when a famous food critic is going to come into the restaurant and the owner forces Carl to stick to old standards instead of doing anything new, which leads to a disparaging review from the food critic. After an altercation at the restaurant because of this, Carl decides to leave, and the rest of the movie is about him re-discovering what he wants in life. I'm trying not to give much away because even though it's a predictable movie, I still liked not knowing every detail before I went it to the film.
What I found surprising about the movie was that despite it's name, the movie isn't really about food, or being a chef. Instead, the movie is about a man's journey to find himself after spending years doing things just for other people. It's about his relationship with his estranged wife and especially his son, who he is always blowing off for work. Surprisingly, it's also just as much about social media and the power it has in this day and age. It just so happens that the medium for this story is about a chef and his number one passion is food, but otherwise this film could have been told with any artistic profession.
One of the reasons people are really positive about this movie is that it mirrors, most would say intentionally, the professional life of Jon Favreau. He started off as a very well recieved indie director who kept getting bigger and bigger. Then he was picked up by Marvel, and as stories over the last couple years have shown, Marvel was the one calling the shots ultimately on those movies, as evidenced by Iron Man 2, a movie that got a lot of flack for how messy it was. Then he got Cowboys Vs. Aliens, a superstar sci-fi spectacular that just bombed. After that, Favreau disappeared from the spotlight. He directed a couple episodes of TV and had producer credits on some things, but then came back with Chef, a movie he wrote, directed and starred in about a man quitting a high-profile restaurant where he had no control to re-discover his roots and what was important to him. It's a film that is beautifully shot, well acted and what I will assume is a small budget. It's Jon Favreau going back to what he became famous for, well shot and written character pieces.
Like I said, the film isn't perfect. The movie's last 15 minutes kind of feel rushed and aren't as fleshed out as the rest of the film, but it's the kind of movie where you don't need like every single detail as to how something happens, the joy is in the journey, and once our charcters learn their lesson the movie goes out on a high note. Ultimately it's a feel good comedy that will make you hungry, especially for some Cuban sandwiches.
No comments:
Post a Comment