Chef

If Chef were as delectable as most of the food that's displayed during the film, it'd be a home run.  Sadly, it's not.  Oh, it's not a bad movie by any means.  It's actually kind of charming and very pleasant.  But that's really all there is to the film.  It unfolds, we smile a couple times, and then it sends us on our way with no real lasting impressions of the characters or the story.  All we remember is the food.

Jon Favreau (who directed, wrote, and produced the film) plays Carl Casper, a highly regarded gourmet chef who is stuck in a creative rut.  He's the head chef at one of L.A.'s hottest restaurants, but he's been working off the same menu for the past 10 years.  On the night that a noted food critic (Oliver Platt) is set to eat, Carl wants to change up the menu, but the owner of the restaurant (Dustin Hoffman) shouts him down, and insists on serving the old favorites.  This leads to a scathing review from the critic, and sends Carl into a spiraling breakdown.  The end result is Carl getting into a heated shouting match with the critic when they meet in public (which happens to go viral on the Internet), and him walking off his job and unsure of what to do with his life.

In a subplot, Carl has a young son named Percy (Emjay Anthony).  The kid is living with Carl's ex-wife (Sofia Vergara), and when father and son get together on weekends, they have trouble connecting or communicating.  They start to bond a little when Percy teaches his dad how to send tweets on line.  They bond even more when Carl finally figures out his path in life.  He buys a battered down food cart, and father and son fix it up together, and decide to take it on the road during a summer road trip.  They sell Cuban sandwiches, which Carl teaches Percy how to make.  As they journey from Miami to L.A., they build memories, and we're supposed to be happy watching them get closer together.  I was happy.  I liked these characters.  Unfortunately, most of the bonding is pushed aside in montages and music performances, so we're kept constantly at a safe distance from these characters we're supposed to be growing to love.

This is Jon Favreau's return to making smaller, personal films after spending the past few years working on studio blockbusters.  He obviously used some of that studio clout to get some pretty big names to do cameos in his film.  Aside from the already mentioned Dustin Hoffman, we also have Scarlett Johansson as the hostess at the trendy restaurant Carl starts out at, John Leguizamo working in Carl's kitchen, and even a brief appearance by Robert Downey Jr.  All of them are fine, and play their parts well.  Really, there's nothing wrong with Chef.  I just couldn't drum up any excitement about what I was watching.  The characters are nice, but never developed beyond the bare minimum that's required.  There's nothing really here that got me involved.  The movie starts at pleasant, and then pretty much stops there, thinking that's enough.

I wanted Favreau and his screenplay to go further with these characters.  We're supposed to want to see Carl bond with his son, and we're even supposed to want to see him patch things up with his ex-wife.  The strange thing is, I never got a sense that he and his ex-wife still had feelings for each other, or were supposed to.  Sure, they're cordial with each other when he shows up to pick up his son, but by the end of the film, we're supposed to want to see them get back together.  It feels sudden, as they haven't really spent much screen time together.  Likewise, when Carl sits his son down to tell him how much he's enjoyed spending time with him, it feels a bit forced, as most of their bonding seems to happen off camera or during montages.  There are some nice father and son scenes throughout the film, but they either needed to be stronger, or there needed to be more of them.

Chef is an odd film to judge, as I can't really recommend it, but I'm not exactly opposed to it either.  I smiled a few times, but never laughed out loud.  I liked the characters, but still felt like I was being kept at a distance.  I found it easy to watch, but not very exciting.  It's the kind of movie where, if you see it, you might reflect on it fondly, but you probably also won't be able to remember much about it.

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