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Chef | 2014 | R | – 4.2.9
A talented chef (Jon Favreau) walks away from his restaurant job after an encounter with an internet food critic (Oliver Platt) and when he cannot find another job, he decides to try his hand at a food truck. He also becomes re-acquainted with his son (Emjay Anthony) and his ex-wife (Sofía Vergara). Also with John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Amy Sedaris, Robert Downey Jr. and Russell Peters. Directed by Jon Favreau. Some dialogue is in Spanish with no subtitles. [1:55]

SEX/NUDITY 4 – A woman is shown lying down while wearing a T-shirt that falls off her shoulder and reveals her bare legs to the upper thigh; it is not clear if she and the man in the room have had sex or not.
 Two men and a boy pour cornstarch in their pants and talk about the heat and humidity affecting their genitals. A man holds a long loaf of bread to his crotch and calls out to a 10 year old boy to look. Two men bite the opposite ends of a sandwich roll for a photograph.
 Several women wear low-cut top and dresses that reveal cleavage in several scenes. One woman wears low-cut and tight-fitting outfits that reveal cleavage and accentuate the outlines of her figure and her buttocks in every one of her scenes. Several women are shown wearing bikinis on a beach and men wearing swim trunks (we see bare chests, abdomens and legs of the men and cleavage, bare abdomens and legs of women).
 A man and a woman move close together and nearly kiss until the woman says that they agreed “not to do this.” Three men hug and one of them says, “Let’s just have a three way right here.” Men and women dance in a club. Men and women dance at a wedding.
 A man asks his 10 year old son if “this is for sex” when asking him about Twitter. A man makes a reference to sending pictures of his genitals on social media. A man tells another man that his assistant just told him that she is pregnant and he suspects that the baby is not his; he describes that she urinated “on a stick.” Two men sing the lyrics of “Sexual Healing” while a 10 year old boy watches and laughs. There are a couple of conversations about a man’s ex-wife and her other ex-husband.

VIOLENCE/GORE 2 – A man yells at another man in a restaurant and makes a comment about vomiting those words back; he then slams on the table and squishes a piece of cake and throws it down while ranting and we see this scene repeatedly on cell phone videos.
 A man carries a pig carcass wrapped in plastic over his shoulder into a restaurant kitchen and places it on a prep table where it is unwrapped and its head is cut off before cutting up the rest of the meat. A man unrolls his collection of chef knives and ignites stove burners.
 Two men (a chef and a restaurant owner) argue bitterly about a menu and the chef quits and leaves the restaurant. A man (a restaurant owner) yells at another man (a chef) about the food he cooks and gives him a hard time about preparing “guts” that the chef describes as sweetbreads. A man yells a threat (seems lighthearted) in a restaurant kitchen after finding a pan of unattended bacon and says, “Grab your ankles because here comes…” A chef yells at his staff. A review of a chef includes insulting descriptions like the food reminded the reviewer of the sagging moist cleavage of an elderly woman and he talked about the chef’s “dramatic weight gain.” Two men argue over Twitter and make insulting remarks about lack of creativity. A man yells at his son for throwing away a filthy tray instead of cleaning it out; the boy yells at him and runs away.
 A boy watches a video of a man being shot by a cat with a machine gun and we see blood splatter on the screen. A man on a city street performs with a skeleton marionette while playing a song with lyrics that include, “I’m so tired of being alone.”
 We see an extremely dirty and rundown food truck and a man and his young son scrub it and clean it out; the boy reacts to the odor when he opens the fridge and finds a tray of decayed food. A boy says, “I think there’s something dead in there” after walking through a rundown food truck. A man puts on a pair of protective booties over his shoes and then slips on the floor a couple of times (he doesn’t’ fall).
 A man tells his 10-year-old son that he cannot have kettle corn because it’s just “carbs covered with sugar,” but then we see them both eating kettle corn. A man reprimands his 10 year old son for using an obscene term.

LANGUAGE 9 – About 45 F-words and its derivatives, 3 sexual references, 51 scatological terms, 22 anatomical terms, 11 mild obscenities, name-calling (haters, psychopath, artsy, sagging moist cleavage, Big Dog, crazy, terd, loser, stupid, lil’ gangster), 3 religious exclamations (e.g. Christ, Oh My God).

SUBSTANCE USE – A man and a woman smoke a marijuana cigarette together. People are shown drinking alcohol in several bar scenes, people drink alcohol in a club scene, two men drink beers and smoke cigars, a man offers a beer to a young boy and he takes a drink but spits it out, and a man drinks a beer while sitting on the roof of a food truck. A man smokes cigarettes in a few bar scenes, a man smokes a cigarette outside a restaurant, and a man puts a cigarette in his mouth but we do not see him light it.

DISCUSSION TOPICS – Restaurant critics, success, creative conflict, creative rut, food trucks, social media, parenting, divorce, pressure, food memories, insecurity, virtual reality, trust issues, disappointment, trying new things, independence, pride, fatherhood.

MESSAGE – Being happy can be the key to success.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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