Chef is a passionate two-hour long love letter to cooking, returning Favreau to his roots of fun dialogue and solid characters. The food is mouthwatering, and when the film focuses on the main story of father and son building a food-truck, it hits. Unfortunately the first and last 20 minutes drag, bogging down in story building instead of just letting the world create itself. Nonetheless, enough joy seeps through to make this a decent small-scale dramedy. Chef's a movie for Millennials, exploring the effect technology and social networking has on family and work. It parallels Favreau's own real-life career: highest highs, lowest lows, and bouncing back. He clearly did his homework on the culinary side, handling the fare with effortlessness. However, Chef is as much about fatherhood as it is food, questioning how to be a parent when you don't feel grown up yourself. This father-son trope is nothing new, but it's a bit more down-to-earth here than most melodramatic family dramas; sweet and true. It's just a bummer that any depth explored is brought bluntly to the surface, rarely allowing us to naturally intuit them. The film's style works, both smooth and jarring like the main characters own cuisine
If only the final edit was more constricted. When they are focused on the kitchen and interplay, full of natural dialogue and chemistry, it works in spades. A tighter setup, some scenes cut (Downey Jr. is wasted and pointless), and a quicker end would make for a much better film. As is, Chef is merely passable, bolstered slightly by deliciously shot gourmet food.
Review of Chef
