Chef review: As feel good as comfort food, but forgettable

When a director’s filmography ranges from Elf (2003) to Iron Man (2008), its sequel and the ambitious-but-ghastly Cowboys and Aliens (2011), there’s no predicting what he’s likely to do next. Jon Favreau may not be the first person you think of for a food film, but with this newest release Chef, the actor-director brings to the table a sweet but unsentimental dramedy that utilises food porn the way his past blockbusters have used CGI. Carl Casper (Favreau, clearly running the show) is a celebrity chef at a popular Los Angeles restaurant. He has a loyal kitchen staff (John Leguizamo as Martin and Bobby Cannavale as Tony provide a lot of the laughs); a hot on-off girlfriend Molly (Johansson) and a refreshingly non-bitchy ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara). His ten-year-old son Percy (Emjay Anthony) adores him. Plus, Casper loves cooking and cooking loves him back. [caption id=“attachment_1578515” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A still from Chef. Image courtesy: Facebook page.[/caption] It seems as though nothing is wrong with his life until Casper gets on Twitter – a sure-shot route to eventual trouble as regular users would know – and his world gets turned upside-down by a venomous review by Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), a sneering food blogger and critic who wields clichés like a sword (don’t you hate it when critics resort to lame clichés?). When Casper decides that he won’t compromise his creative flair and quits his job at the restaurant, he’s got to figure out what he’s going to do next. If you’re looking for a conflict in Chef, there isn’t one. Slicing, dicing, grating, and garnishing make up what seems like a fourth of this picture’s running length. The cast is a dream. The tone, somewhere between Little Miss Sunshine and any Alexander Payne film, is spot-on and consistent. The direction is restrained and subtle. The writing is snappy and everyone in this movie looks like they were having a blast on set. Chef isn’t a memorable film, but there’s really nothing wrong with it. It’s feelgood, like comfort food. Much of the humour in Chef comes from Casper’s inability to understand how the world around him has changed. At its core, Chef is a film about a mid-life crisis. Casper doesn’t understand how social media works. He doesn’t understand how the restaurant business works. But it’s also about the creative spirit that won’t be straitjacketed by commerce and that old American favourite, the father-son relationship. Favreau, blessed with a sense of deadpan humour, makes up for his lack of versatility as an actor by being an affable protagonist that you can’t help but cheer. He’s a chef who never stops being one, even while cooking breakfast for his son. Pro-tip: prepare your wallet for the inevitable food binge this movie will definitely induce. (Suprateek Chatterjee is editor of Visual Disobedience, a community for emerging indie artists, and a freelance writer. In his spare time, he likes to compose music with his electro-rock band Vega Massive and his Twitter handle is @SupraMario)