As I'd predicted, I enjoyed this film. It didn't have as many of the problems that I'd feared. The very ending might have gone a bit too far in an effort for a happy ending and come off as a bit too on the nose, but in other ways the film managed to avoid falling into cliché.
One concern I had going into the film was that it might be too blatantly based on Jon Favreau's experience working on "Iron Man 2" and the way he felt treated by the Marvel Studios brass. While there are obvious comparisons that can be inferred by watching this film, it also manages to stand on its own to the extent that I likely would not have been aware of the connections had I not been looking for them. The story follows Favreau's character, a chef, who gets a bad review for making the kind of food the owner of his restaurant wants him to make instead of new, more creatively fulfilling recipes that he wants to cook. If the film is indeed a metaphor for Hollywood, it works, making the larger theme not about either food or movies, but art in general. It also makes it interesting when you can view a film as its own thing, but also in a meta way. Much like Favreau's character goes back to his roots by opening up a food truck where he cooks what he wants, Favreau himself is doing a similar thing, making this smaller movie instead of another blockbuster.
Near the end of the film, there was one part I particularly liked. Much of the movie dealt with the main character growing closer to his son. I was waiting for the moment when events would conspire to put him in a situation where he dramatically let his son down, undoing all of that growth, only for him to then make a grand gesture or sacrifice to make everything better again. The film doesn't avoid the idea of this cliché entirely, but it does handle it in a much more subtle and realistic manner. I wasn't forced to roll my eyes at the screenplay's machinations, since everything felt tonally consistent and was portrayed in a low key way.
Whether this film ends up being particularly memorable remains to be seen. My guess is that in a month or so, if asked about it, I'll probably shrug and say that it was pretty good. It has some nice moments of comedy, and the character relationships are well drawn. The characters themselves, however, are often a little more than archetypes, but not a whole lot more. This makes them easily identifiable and relatable to an audience, but also, long term, makes them harder to distinguish from similar characters in other films. It makes for an entertaining time, but maybe not a memorable one.
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