Delayed Reaction: Chef

The Pitch: Jon Favreau wants to make you hungry.

Chef is a vanity project. The plot is thin and the pace is listless. I question the realism and I can't shake the feeling that Favreau learned about Twitter only shortly before writing the screenplay. Despite all this, I found it hard to resists its charms. Favreau calls in a bunch of his friends and collaborators to fill out the cast. So, people like Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr, and Dustin Hoffman get to show up for a bit and John Leguizamo and Sofia Vergara stay around longer to make more of an impression. The kid, Emjay Anthony, is quite good for a ten-year-old. The food looked delicious. I ended up eating an earlier dinner than I intended right after watching the movie. It's an oddly-paced film. The entirety of the road trip in the food truck, right around when most films would be building to the highest point of tension, feels more like a victory lap. The traditional three act structure is subverted in favor of just letting the movie breathe. Everything works out in the end and I never entertained the notion that it wouldn't. There's much worse ways to spend a couple hours.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend