Chef

It's the most conveniently worked out movie I've seen in a long time, and yet Chef is the most fun movie I've seen this year (so far). It's an utterly joyous, unashamed foodie road trip movie about a once celebrated chef named Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) whose public meltdown (when he confronts a food critic who trashed him) goes viral and ends up completely uprooting his life. Casper was once the darling of the culinary world, but now he's old hat. For the past decade he's seemingly been in an ideal position as head chef at a well-known restaurant in California, but secretly it's confined him, made him unhappy and forced him to settle for a routine. Moreover, things are not great between him and his 10-year-old son Percy (played with delightful matter-of-factness by Emjay Anthony). Percy hasn't adjusted to his parents' divorce, even though they have the most amicable broken marriage in history.

But then, Carl gives in to his ex-wife's suggestion that he purchase a food truck and start making the recipes he's good at and wants to make. This suggestion--which Carl predictably balks at initially--proves to be a winner, and provides a framework for a new bond between father and son. They all go to Miami to grab the truck, and then Carl, his son, and Carl's long-time colleague (John Leguizamo) who also conveniently shows up to join in their grand foodventure, trek across country making Cubans, beignets, and assorted other delicious delicacies as they head back to California.

Jon Favreau wrote and directed Chef, and he captures the zeal of a foodie in this movie: We get to see the mouth-watering recipes that Carl cooks up, and the delight that appears on his face when he discovers a new, delicious dish, and the art that food can conjure up. It's perhaps the most accessible art form there is.

But I can already hear the critical voices in my head. I heard them last night in the theater about an hour into the movie. I looked at one of the friends with whom I was sitting and both of us were thinking, "something has to go wrong, right?" We were waiting and waiting for a problem to arrive. Granted, the film did have an initial problem, that being Carl Casper's embarrassing viral video fiasco and the subsequent destruction of his career. But things pick up very fast, and everything is all the more convenient for Carl because his ex-wife is supportive in a way that seems totally unrealistic. My inner-critic and my movie-watching past had primed me for some other contrived conflict to be inserted into the narrative. That moment, that conflict, never came. And we were left thinking, should we be okay with this? Is Chef too easy on its characters? Does everything work out too conveniently?

Oh right. It's a movie. And thank you Chef for giving us a movie that is a freaking movie. It's just so rare these days to find one that doesn't want to throw millions of contrived obstacles in its characters' paths. Yes, the events in Chef, the people in Chef, are perhaps unrealistic. The ex-wife (played with verve by Sofia Vergara) is so obviously still in love with Carl (and he with her) that you just know they're going to get back together. It's like The Parent Trap. And the son so desperately longs to be a part of Carl's world, that Carl's myopic inability to get to know his son (at first) seems to be the only real contrivance here. In fact, it was Jon Favreau's character that threatened to be the one annoying thing about this movie. For the first twenty minutes, as we watch him self-destruct, he's very obviously his own worst enemy. And that did get on my nerves. But things quickly change for the better, and this movie won me over thoroughly. And at least there were big things at stake in this movie: Carl's career, his relationship with his son, his own belief in himself.

There's another side to Chef that makes it culturally very relevant, or maybe just culturally amusing, actually. The film taps into the way the internet has revolutionized how we live and interact with each other. Favreau paints himself as the typically technologically-inept grown-up, whose son runs rings around him with a smart phone and uses Twitter (a website which Carl often amusingly fails to understand) to advertise the whereabouts of their food truck. In fact, it is Carl's ineptitude that triggers the whole movie: what he imagines to be a private message (via Twitter) to the food critic who slammed him, is actually seen by all and eventually passed on to thousands and thousands of people. Perhaps this movie was funded by Twitter? It can be difficult to distinguish between a movie that plugs a giant social media site and one that shows us how it has affected us. Chef falls into the second category.

For some time now I've wondered how movies would change as a result of the cell phone age and the internet age, and how movies would depict characters interacting with their gadgets, and I think Chef does a fine job of this. It makes use of these new things that seem to be taking over more and more parts of our lives, and manages to show us the best and the worst about them with a sense of humor. Perhaps the best example of a movie critiquing our gadget addiction is Don Jon, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt comedy in which his character's sister is always glued to her phone, and barely speaks a word through the entire film.

Finally, I once again feel the need to defend Chef. Yes, yes, yes, it is too damned easy. Everything just works out so nicely. But it was such a pleasure to watch, such a happy, energetic, likable movie, that I don't care. I hope people will give this movie a chance and not resort to picking its story apart because we're all so used to something more cynical in our entertainment, even when it comes to our comedies. With Scarlet Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Amy Sedaris (in a very funny cameo as Carl's ex-wife's publicist), Robert Downey, Jr., Bobby Cannavale, and Oliver Platt (as the food critic).

The Wolf of Wall Street

A strange mixture of brilliant and repulsive. You don't so much see The Wolf of Wall Street as you experience it. It's like looking into the heart of decay, only it's encrusted with jewels and wrapped in money. I had the same problem last year with Killer Joe. It was one heck of a movie, but I felt ashamed to even admit that I liked it. Is it wrong to enjoy depravity on the big screen? Even a little? Is it a sign of our own moral corruption that we might award accolades to a movie like director Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, which some have dared to call a great film? Mike LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, "Though Raging Bull must still go down as Martin Scorsese's greatest achievement, The Wolf of Wall Street makes the race for No. 2 a lot more interesting." Robert Kojder of the website What Culture concludes, "It's impossible not to become absolutely immersed."

Perhaps J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader sums it up best: "Scorsese's helpless attraction to the very behavior he wants to indict becomes the movie's serrated edge." (All of these quotes were accessed via Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn't exactly an arduous task.) The critics don't all agree of course. Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal didn't like it, and neither did Stephanie Zacharek of Village Voice, calling the film "too much of a bad thing."

I find myself in a weird middle ground. I don't feel that The Wolf of Wall Street is a great film that will forever be remembered in the annals of American cinema. (Then again, it might be.) But I also didn't hate it. I very much enjoyed the movie, and was rarely if ever bored (which is saying a lot because it's three hours long and I usually get restless after two). I'm fascinated by people who think wealth and stuff will make them happy, perhaps because I have to fight this belief myself sometimes. (Don't we all?) There must be an element of schadenfreude at work here: I'm glued to the screen for three hours watching a heartless S.O.B. steal from lower-middle-class schlubs, abuse Quaaludes like they're going off the market (oh, wait, they already were!), take Penicillin shots every time he sleeps with a prostitute, and treat his family like pawns in his narcissistic little game, and all the while I'm hoping for the big payoff: the fall. That's the appeal of movies: they rise up, and then they fall, and it's a glorious smashing effect full of broken shards of glass and bloody palms and dust settling over the fallen anti-hero's decadent, decaying corpse.

Here's the gist of the plot: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a slick New Yorker with dollar signs in his eyes who starts a successful stock trading company from the ground up. Jordan is ever the slick salesman (a character trait that recurs throughout DiCaprio's oeuvre), and he turns the penny-stock-trading schmucks who work for him into first-class brokers who could make a man buy his own pen from them. Belfort's schemes aren't exactly legal, which gets him in trouble with the SEC and the FBI. And along the way, Belfort becomes addicted to drugs, sex, and the overall celebration of excess. What's a guy to do when he has so much money that transferring it to a Swiss bank account takes six separate trips for five separate people with stacks of bills taped to their bodies?

So basically, it's an ultimate American success story. In America, if you really want to, you can do this. And Jordan Belfort did and got caught, but then he served his measly 22 months and became a motivational speaker and wrote two books. (The script by Terence Winter is based on one of them, of the same name.)

But we're in it for the fall. And boy does Jordan Belfort fall! When leads his considerable staff in some kind of tribal chant (taught him by his mentor, who's played by Matthew McConaughey, in a cameo appearance), where they beat their chests and hum this creepy guttural mantra. It's a money-lover's war chant, and it takes this whole money-laundering thing into an almost prehistoric realm: We haven't changed, but the stuff we chase after has. And the toys are shinier and more expensive. (And those Quaaludes, man! Oh the Quaaludes!)

There's not much more to say about this movie. It's incredibly well-made and it really is brilliant in a sick sort of way. But you've been warned: it's like staring at death, or perhaps a mirror (if you want to take Belfort as an exaggeration of every person that ever valued stuff too much). And there are a lot of scenes depicting drug abuse and sex. So bear that in mind before you head to the theater. With Jonah Hill (whose character I genuinely loathed), Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin (who gives a memorable performance as the president of a Swiss bank), Cristin Milioti, and Christine Ebersole. ★★★

Identity Thief

There's nothing particularly original about Identity Thief, and the credibility of the plot--not to mention much of the action--is slim at best, but it's fun watching Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in a road trip-buddy movie in which she plays a white-trash ne'er-do-well who's been racking up thousands of dollars in debt with fake credit cards using his gender-neutral name (Sandy Patterson). McCarthy's performance is funny, flamboyant, lovable, even touching at times, and Bateman is his usual annoyed but likable self. (He seems to always be playing Michael Bluth from Arrested Development). 

There's a sort of side-plot about McCarthy's character being pursued by angry fellow criminals and a bounty hunter, which spurs some of the story's action but never quite gels as solid comedy writing. Still, the jokes, even when they don't work, are in ready supply, and the movie makes a few surprise turns that keep it from being totally predictable. (I suppose it's probably fairly obvious that squeaky clean numbers-cruncher Bateman will be negatively influenced by his duplicitous counterpart.)

With Jon Favreau, Amanda Peet, T.I., Genesis Rodriguez, Morris Chestnut, John Cho, Robert Patrick, and Eric Stonestreet. Written by Craig Mazin. Directed by Seth Gordon. 111 min. ★★½

Couples Retreat

I enjoyed it. Not a laugh a minute or anything, but very entertaining. Four couples are guests at a resort called Eden, where their specialization is in couples therapy. In an effort to get the group rate, Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) coerce their friends into joining them for the weeklong pleasure vacation/therapy session. The other couples are content to enjoy themselves while their friends work out their marriage problems, but it becomes clear that no one's "house" is in order. Couples Retreat is funny and enjoyable but never really peaks comically. Perhaps this is not something it even attempts, and that didn't bother me much. I was intrigued enough to want to know what would develop between the various characters. Where the movie did not succeed was in developing real, adult problems that it was apparently unwilling to really solve (this is supposed to be a comedy, after all), so the resolutions were happy but not necessarily believable in that they happened too fast and somewhat unrealistically. The exceptions were Vince Vaughan and Malin Akerman's characters, who realized (I am paraphrasing): "we don't have a problem. We have LOTS of problems. And maybe that's okay." Couples Retreat may pretend to offer profundity without doing so, and this makes it somewhat more subtle (in spite of the often crude humor that may or may not affect one's enjoyment of the movie). ★★½