I don't do it much anymore, but I used to watch the Food Network and the Travel Channel. Like a lot. Like a whole lot. Like so much that I could identify what episode of Man v. Food was coming on within the first 15 seconds and could tell you who was going to win this or that particular episode of Iron Chef (hint: it's probably Bobby Flay). And while I don't really watch either of those channels anymore, I still love food. I love eating food, I love cooking food and I love looking at food. The latter, commonly referred to as "food porn," is a recent discovery of mine. For those of you that don't know, it's basically when someone cooks something, takes a beautiful picture of it and then typically posts it online. I'm not sure exactly what's so satisfying about looking at food that someone else prepared and that I'll never actually get to try. I think it has something to do with proving that food can be an art form. Just like filmmaking or writing or painting or whatever, food can be a way to express oneself - to cut through all the bullshit in order to reveal and share something deeply personal with other people while discovering (or rediscovering) who you are. Ultimately, that's what Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) does with his "El Jefe" foodtruck. It's also why Chef is one of the most surprising and wonderful films of the summer.
Carl Casper is a Miami-born chef who, after striking it big, moves to Los Angeles for a chance at something even bigger. When the film picks up, he's finally getting that chance as his restaurant is about to be reviewed by the city's most prominent food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt). Popular with both the restaurant hostess Molly (Scarlett Johansson) and his staff (including John Leguizamo and Bobby Cannavale), Casper decides to try and blow Michel away with a brand new tasting menu. Unfortunately, the restaurant's owner (Dustin Hoffman) demands he "play the hits" and stick to the menu they have served for years. This in turn leads to Michel writing a scathing article about Casper's pedestrian efforts and how the chef has lost his originality and the fire he once showed in Miami. Hurt and with help from his son Percy, Casper sends what he believes to be a private message to Michel on Twitter which ends up starting a flame war that leads to Casper becoming a viral sensation and subsequently losing his job at the restaurant. Lost without prospects, Casper agrees to take a trip back to Miami with his ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara) and Percy to spend more time with his son and to see Inez's other ex-husband (Robert Downey Jr.) for help. While sitting down to dinner with Inez and her father, Casper is inspired by an authentic Cuban sandwich and decides to get back to basics with a foodtruck in the hopes of rekindling the passion and artistic originality that Michel chided him for lacking.
And that's about where the conflict of the film ends. Sure, there are a few little dust-ups here and there - Casper and his son clean out the food truck but get into a fight when Percy won't clean rotten food out of a perfectly good pan - but those are quickly resolved and forgotten. In fact, the majority of the final half of the movie is just Casper, John Leguizamo's Martin and Percy getting the foodtruck up to snuff and taking it out on the road. The truck doesn't break down, Casper teaches Percy to cook and despite being around scolding hot objects and sharp knives nothing bad happens to the kid. As viewers, we're programmed to believe that something bad is pop out from around the corner to throw the whole operation into panic but nothing like that happens. A cop comes to tell Casper he can't park the foodtruck at a specific location but the correct permits are shown and that's it. Even when the cop recognizes Casper as the guy on YouTube who has a breakdown at a restaurant and berates a food critic in front of a packed house, the most that results from it is that they take a few photos together. Typically, this type of storytelling would cause a film to fall apart. As Syd Field says in his famous book on screenwriting, "All drama is conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character. Without character, there is no story. And without story, there is no screenplay." But with Chef, it not only works, it's the main reason I liked it as much as I did.
Chef isn't about Carl Casper becoming a success again, sticking it to his former boss while finding a way to discredit Ramsey Michel and humiliate him in front of his 100,000 Twitter followers. It's about Casper doing something for himself again. It's about Casper finding a way to love his profession again and sharing that love with the people he cares about - and it shows. Half (maybe even more) of the shots in the film are of Casper or someone else cooking delicious looking food. I was worried in the beginning when a scene between Casper and Percy in a car was choppily edited together with a bunch of standard quick cuts back and forth between the front and back seats. However, when the subject of the frame is the food, the result is breathtaking. Carne asada, crawfish, vegetables of all ilks, barbecue, pastries, even a grilled cheese is filmed in a way that optimizes the beauty of the art Casper is creating. And the most important part? He's happy.
In an early argument with Dustin Hoffman's Riva, the restaurant owner tells Casper, "If you want to do that artistic shit, do it on your own time." A message Favreau himself has undoubtedly received a number of times during his own career. Since the days of Made and Swingers, Favreau has been a director of mostly big budget entertainment. Films like Elf, Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Zathura and Cowboys and Aliens have come and gone with varying degrees of success. After Cowboys and Aliens flopped following internal problems with the Iron Man franchise, Favreau decided he needed to do something for himself. Sound familiar? The meta aspect of Chef isn't exactly subtle or nuanced. However, what I find the most interesting is the comparison of simply doing something for the love of doing it - doing something to make yourself happy. Like Casper, it feels as if Favreau did Chef in order to rediscover himself and to express his art with the people he loves - his audience. That's why the film works. That's why those shots of Casper cooking are so gorgeous. Not only is there love in the character for his cooking, there's love in the camera's lens for Chef.
If Favreau decided to do Chef as a way to both express himself and do something that makes him love his profession again it shows. From choice of actors to the locations to the cinematography and the music selection, everything fits perfectly. There doesn't need to be conflict to tell the story, because the film's palpable honesty and sincerity is there to tell it. The best things in life are things you do out of love. Whether it be love for the material, love for the process, love for those who will see it and benefit from it or all of the above, when you do something simply for the love of doing it and you reveal something deeply real it is impossible to go wrong. Chef is an incredibly heart-warming film filled with joy and passion and love (and delicious, delicious food). And because it's clear how much enjoyment came out of creating it, it's impossible not to feel that enjoyment as you watch it. That and intense, jealousy-fueled hunger pangs.
8.5 out of 10
