Jon Favreau was a small-time actor who worked his way into
directing with the indie film Made,
and then into popular discourse with films like Elf and the first two Iron
Man films. Now Favreau has tried to
work his way back to his indie roots with Chef,
a self-produced, self-starring film that chronicles the life of a master chef
as he tries to navigate an overly-controlling boss and an unfair food
critic. I don’t know about you, but it
sounds to me like Mr. Favreau has some issues he needs to work out.
The film starts out strong enough, with Favreau’s character
facing clear struggles against his restaurant’s establishment and inadvertently
starting a flame war on Twitter with the aforementioned critic. It all feels a bit too much like a
heavy-handed metaphor for the life of a director within the constraints of the
corporate system, but solid characters make the experience tolerable. Favreau is surrounded by an eclectic cast of
interesting characters, including the zany chefs who work under him, the restaurant’s
hostess who functions as his best friend, and Robert Downey Jr. being about as
Tony Stark as he can be without infringing on Marvel’s copyright. They’re all likeable characters with some
witty dialogue to round them all out, even if they are all a bit sycophantic to
Favreau’s supposed genius.
The film’s primary conflict, though, revolves around
Favreau’s son, whom Favreau constantly ignores because of his work. The two only see each other infrequently due
to Favreau’s divorce from the kid’s mother, and when they do see each other,
Favreau is either distracted with finding ingredients for his kitchen or
doesn’t try very hard to relate with the ten-year-old, mostly because he
doesn’t know how. Eventually, this leads
to a heartwarming realization that Favreau can connect with his son by teaching
him how to cook, and the two grow close by driving a food truck around the
American Southeast and selling to avid crowds of hungry fans.
But this change of pace takes place a mere hour into an
almost two-hour film, and the remaining hour is a slog of driving the food
truck from location to location and absolutely
no conflict takes place. Favreau
takes what starts as a solid narrative film with some annoying
self-aggrandizing allegory and turns it into a personal wish-fulfillment
fantasy. He and his son get along great
and they have no problems communicating anymore; one of his old chefs just up
and quits his job in order to work the food truck with him; even his ex-wife
starts to appreciate him again. Jon Favreau
spends the last hour of his return to indie film masturbating into the camera,
getting off on just how great his life is now that he’s abandoned the
corporately controlled film-making business and is making the movies he wants to make. As compelling as this may be to him, it’s boring
for those who have to put up with his ego.
Chef is by no
means a terrible movie, but it is one of the most self-congratulatory and
narcissistic I’ve ever seen. Perhaps I’m
a little bit biased based on my knowledge of Favreau’s career, but even taking
the film as a whole out of context, it still suffers from narrative pacing
issues that completely destroy any pay-off the third act was supposed to
provide. If you want to see Chef, do yourself a favor and turn off
the film when Favreau finishes cleaning out the food truck with his kid. It’ll turn a bad movie into a good one and
save about an hour of your life. If that
doesn’t sound appetizing to you, this may be a course you’ll want to skip.
Know of any other narcissistic stabs at film-making? Let me know in the comments so I can avoid
them.
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