Chef

Certain movies are called “passion projects” for a reason. It often involves a filmmaker leaving his or her comfort zone to make something different that they still care deeply about. But it also involves putting your personality as an artist on the line. In fact “passion project” is sometimes used as a slight against artists when it seems like they’ve made something for themselves and no one else.

With “Chef,” John Favreau may have just made a passion project about passion projects. The story about cooking and food is easy enough to swallow, but the special sauce are all the transparent parallels to Favreau’s career as a filmmaker and trying to be a populist artist while inside a system that saps creativity.

Favreau plays Carl Casper, a mild celebrity chef in an upscale Los Angeles restaurant about to face his biggest challenge yet in the form of a popular food critic (a “blogger” as he puts it condescendingly). Carl wants to cook something daring, but the restaurant’s owner (Dustin Hoffman) pressures him into preparing the same old restaurant favorites. The critic trashes him, and Carl starts a flame war and later a literal shouting match lashing out at the snarky critic, costing Carl his job and dignity.

That description may not sound out of the ordinary, but the filmmaker parallels are a big, low hanging fruit the way Favreau stages this story. With “Iron Man,” Favreau is arguably the most talented of the Marvel superhero movie directors, but even he has had a hard time letting his personality shine and make the movie he wants inside the Hollywood tentpole system. And although the “Iron Man” movies have been well liked, it hasn’t stopped critics writing him off for less.

Carl talks about the critic as someone who’s “got it in for me,” or a “hater,” a word he said didn’t exist before the Internet invited everyone to be yet another cook in the kitchen. At the same time, Carl takes his son to a farmer’s market and holds up a juicy apple. “Why would you eat kettle corn when you can have this piece of fruit? It’s beautiful.”

It’s a cute way of wondering why people only want something sugary and unhealthy when they can easily have something new yet just as simple and sweet, like “Chef” itself. It’s not as if he’s making some elaborate and challenging dish like sweetbread, maybe an equivalent to some obscure art house film.

With all these ingredients, why couldn’t we get a movie that was actually an insider Hollywood commentary rather than just something about food? Maybe that’s exactly the sort of movie that could never get made today, or exactly the kind of passion project no one would want to see.

Or maybe it says more about me than it does about Favreau. “Chef” really is a passion project in the sense that Favreau did a lot of training to improve his cooking just so all the food porn on display here looks more convincing. And as a movie in which Carl gets a food truck to get back on his feet and reconnect with his son, it’s very rich in the art and craft of food preparation, of appreciating flavors and exploring American culture through food.

As a movie about food or even about criticism of the arts, something like “Ratatouille” has a lot more flavor. As a fun passion project that doesn’t feel like homework, “Chef” goes down easy enough.

3 stars