Durham Library Showing "Chef" at Movie Matinee

Movie Notes by Don Bourret

Event: Thursday, March 12, at 1:30 p.m.

Chef is a good natured, rambling, often hilarious, thoroughly enjoyable comedy drama. Carl Casper is a master chef laboring and frustrated in an L.A. restaurant but with a passion for developing innovative dishes derived from his Miami-based culinary roots. This does not sit well with the restaurant’s owner, who wants only the traditional dishes his customers come in for. On the flip side, a local snarky food critic crucifies Carl for eschewing innovation.

He finally quits in frustration, returns briefly to Miami, acquires and renovates a ramshackle food truck and drives it back to L.A. to follow his dream. Traveling with him on this junket is his best friend and fellow cook Martin and his young son Percy, from whom he has been estranged since his divorce a few years earlier. Along the way they stop to savor the sights in New Orleans’s French Quarter and Austin, Texas, and manage to sell a lot of Cubanos (Cuban sandwiches) on the streets. Some great location shots!

This is a savory stew of film genres. It is for sure a foodie movie. It is also a road movie, a family-and-father/son bonding movie and a man-pursuing-his-passion movie. Accompanying this amiable odyssey is a soundtrack with a heady mix of Latin and New Orleans jazz and blues.

Writer/director/star Jon Favreau followed his own dream in getting this film made. After recent directing and producing associations with big-bucks blockbusters like Iron Man and Avengers, Favreau longed to make a small food-centric indie spiced with some biographical elements, along the lines of Eat Drink Man Woman and Big Night. The A-list supporting cast he recruited didn’t hurt in getting the movie made: Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson, John Leguizamo, Robert Downey, Jr., Oliver Platt, Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara, among others.

The film is a real joy, and (spoiler alert!) expect to cheer at its end. And frequent footage of succulent food is likely to leave you famished, but go easy on those free snacks.