Chef

the only explanation i can think of for this trite mishmash of lifeless clichés is that somehow it's a brilliant parody that went right over my head. There are occasional moments of humor, most of them involving the effortlessly adorable John Leguizamo, but…much of it is so eye-rollingly bad that it's tempting to get on a plane to LA and go down the list of people who need a good slap. Check, cameos by all kinds of people who should know better (exception, the chewing-gum-faced omnipresent Scarlett, who…no expectations of her knowing better, so i guess she's excused), check, happy Latin music at every turn, dimpled kid dancing on Daddy's shoulders, lazy Hispanics who ignore the white man but get in line to help when fellow Espanitch espeakerrr promises them food and beer…just an endless string of weary sighs. Shame on you Jon Favreau, you worked so hard to climb to where you are, and then pee it all away on this drivel? Was there maybe an equivalent of the restaurant boss who said, no, don't show up at the restaurant with all the great food you cooked and show the critic your real magic, that would just end the movie, no, better if you come and bitch the guy out and call him an asshole 10 times. Oh, and we finally get a chance to find out what's the "buzz" about all this new-fangled "social networking" stuffs the kids are all doing now, with what do they call it twitter or something? can someone please explain to me how it works, oh wow, the 10 year old kid is a master of it! please program my VCR! The only surprise was that there wasn't a tearful smiling dog looking into the lights at the end. They even ended with Oye Como Va. Jon Favreau, shame on you; you need to step back from making movies and go run a food truck and think about what you've become. Get rid of all the yes men posse that didn't smack you in the head early enough on, and find some friends who won't let you get away with such crap. p.s. Sofia Vergara's boob job is really sad, looks like she stuffed a pillow in there. Did her head shrink? Her mouth is going to fall right off.

I'm no foodie but I really enjoyed this road-trip / father-son / buddy movie, written directed by and starring Jon Favreau, based on the recent life and times of a perfectionist chef who struggles to suppress his own innovation to the demands of his conservative paymaster boss. More than this, he gets involved in a spat with the town's number 1 food critic, sees his relationship with his son founder under pressure of work and still pines after his glamorous and super-rich ex-wife. There's not much more to the story than that and I feared for all the anticipated parental-bonding scenes I would see the second I clapped eyes on his flop-haired 10 year old son but I was very pleasantly surprised to be engaged by this lighthearted, fast-moving, feel-good movie, right up to the predictable happy ending for all concerned. With a busy but enjoyable soundtrack of soul and salsa in the background, nice realistic acting by all the leads right down to son Percy and of course lots of scrumptious shots of freshly made food, this movie certainly mixed its ingredients together well, delivering in the end a most palatable dish. Perhaps the star-power cameos were a little unnecessary, maybe the father-son stuff did get a little hokey at times and the wraparound happy ending did seem somewhat forced but on the whole I found this a very watchable and occasionally funny movie which more than whetted my appetite for a decent Saturday night stay-in movie.