100 | 2014-05-15 | Mick LaSalle |
Chef is the best thing he (Favreau) has ever done, as writer or director or actor. It's the sort of thing of beauty that filmmakers are ultimately remembered for. |
Read More: San Francisco Chronicle |
91 | 2014-04-18 | Drew McWeeny |
The film is loose and genuine and makes great use of place. |
Read More: Hitfix |
90 | 2014-05-08 | Gary Goldstein |
If this all sounds fairly rote, it's far from it. That's because the filmmaker largely eschews done-to-death family dynamics, forced obstacles and predictable responses for authentic interaction, organic humor and a hopeful vitality. |
Read More: Los Angeles Times |
88 | 2014-05-22 | Joe Williams |
Best of all is Favreau. Instead of mass-producing another superhero epic, he has given the overfed public a dish of right-sized comfort food. |
Read More: St. Louis Post-Dispatch |
88 | 2014-05-15 | Ty Burr |
An engaged, engaging voyage of (re)discovery that’s too in love with its subject to qualify as food porn. It’s food romance. |
Read More: Boston Globe |
88 | 2014-05-15 | Michael O'Sullivan |
There’s nothing terribly profound about Chef. But its message — that relationships, like cooking, take a hands-on approach — is a sweet and sustaining one. |
Read More: Washington Post |
88 | 2014-05-08 | Scott Bowles |
A slow-cooked film that's one of the most heartwarming of the young year. |
Read More: USA Today |
88 | 2014-05-08 | Peter Travers |
Buoyed by a Latin-flavored score and Favreau's knack for improv inspiration, Chef is the perfect antidote to Hollywood junk food. Like the best meals and movies, this irresistible concoction feels good for the soul. |
Read More: Rolling Stone |
83 | 2014-05-22 | Jeff Baker |
Favreau's a big man who knows how to wield a chef's knife and shoots the food truck scenes with a hectic good nature that's infectious. |
Read More: Portland Oregonian |
80 | 2014-05-23 | Mike Scott |
Here's a film that feeds the heart and the soul. |
Read More: New Orleans Times-Picayune |
80 | 2014-05-10 | Christina Izzo |
A meandering middle and sticky-sweet third act can be overlooked if only for the savviness with which Favreau portrays the food world. |
Read More: Time Out New York |
78 | 2014-05-21 | Marjorie Baumgarten |
Chef is filled to the brim with the kind of heart and vivacity that makes up for the film’s familiar storyline. |
Read More: Austin Chronicle |
76 | 2014-03-09 | William Goss |
If the Favreau-written “Swingers” concerned itself with the pursuit of meaningful romance and the Favreau-directed “Made” tackled the pursuit of a better living, then the slight if continually amusing Chef is clearly his paean to rekindling one’s passions, whether as an artist, a husband or a father. |
Read More: Film.com |
75 | 2014-06-05 | Craig Offman |
Chef is compelling, somewhat convincing and, according to many who know better than I, it’s largely on trend. |
Read More: The Globe and Mail (Toronto) |
75 | 2014-05-15 | Richard Roeper |
Funny, quirky and insightful, with a bounty of interesting supporting characters and not a ton of concern about telling a conventional story. |
Read More: Chicago Sun-Times |
75 | 2014-05-15 | Connie Ogle |
Favreau worked hard to replicate an authentic restaurant world, and it shows in every frame that involves chopping, dicing, slicing, sautéing or otherwise cooking (he also finds an ingenious way to visually portray Twitter, so vital in the marketing of food trucks). |
Read More: Miami Herald |
75 | 2014-05-10 | Roger Moore |
Chef is Favreau’s most personal film since “Swingers,” an overlong comedy full of his food, his taste in music, his favorite places and a boatload of his favorite actors. |
Read More: McClatchy-Tribune News Service |
75 | 2014-05-09 | Susan Wloszczyna |
This is comfort comedy, pure and simple. |
Read More: RogerEbert.com |
75 | 2014-05-07 | Clark Collis |
The first two thirds of Chef crackle with hunger-inducing imagery and laughter-provoking gags. |
Read More: Entertainment Weekly |
75 | 2014-05-07 | Lou Lumenick |
He’s great as a celebrity chef who’s forced to re-examine his priorities in this extremely funny and big-hearted comedy that Favreau also wrote. |
Read More: New York Post |
70 | 2014-05-09 | Bilge Ebiri |
A comfort movie about comfort food, Chef won’t knock your socks off, but it believes in itself — and for Favreau, that’s all that matters. |
Read More: New York Magazine (Vulture) |
70 | 2014-05-08 | Joe Morgenstern |
Like so much in Chef, the plot resolution seems contrived and a bit silly. By then, though, we've had plenty of laughs, and generous helpings of warm feelings—the meat and potatoes of real life. |
Read More: Wall Street Journal |
70 | 2014-03-10 | Joe Leydon |
The final destination is entirely predictable — right down to the deus ex machina reappearance of an erstwhile antagonist — but the trip itself is never less than pleasant, and often extremely funny. |
Read More: Variety |
67 | 2014-05-09 | Peter Rainer |
There’s a pretty good movie buried somewhere deep inside the ungainly pastry that is Chef. |
Read More: Christian Science Monitor |
63 | 2014-05-15 | Michael Phillips |
Favreau's masterly light touch as an actor hasn't yet translated to a similarly deft offhandedness behind the camera. The movie, slick and shallow, is fairly entertaining anyway. |
Read More: Chicago Tribune |
60 | 2014-06-23 | Angie Errigo |
Eat well beforehand or you’ll be in tummy-rumbling, tongue-hanging-out agony as the merry band cook their way across America. Good fun and happy, filling fare. |
Read More: Empire |
60 | 2014-05-08 | Stephen Holden |
[A] shallow but enjoyable all-American morality play. |
Read More: The New York Times |
60 | 2014-05-08 | Joe Neumaier |
Scenes of Favreau at the grill bantering with Leguizamo and Cannavale could almost sustain an entire movie. |
Read More: New York Daily News |
60 | 2014-05-07 | David Ehrlich |
It may not be for all tastes, but there’s genuine value in a feel-good film that works this well without making viewers feel bad first. |
Read More: The Dissolve |
60 | 2014-03-10 | John DeFore |
The easygoing comedy keeps a familiar story going despite minor plot hiccups. |
Read More: The Hollywood Reporter |
58 | 2014-05-07 | A.A. Dowd |
For anyone who’s followed Favreau’s career since the mid-’90s, the temptation to read Chef as veiled autobiography will be overpowering. |
Read More: The A.V. Club |
58 | 2014-03-09 | Eric Kohn |
By its later scenes, Chef only finds respite from its bland qualities through the scrumptious-looking dishes constantly on display. As self-indulgent vanity projects go, this one's pretty innocuous, if only because it's always easy on the eyes. |
Read More: indieWIRE |
50 | 2014-05-01 | Amy Nicholson |
Chef is so charmingly middlebrow that it's exactly the cinematic comfort food it mocks: Favreau has made not a game-changing meal to remember, but a perfect chocolate lava cake. |
Read More: Village Voice |
40 | 2014-05-08 | Inkoo Kang |
Personal or not, this lazy fantasy doesn't offer many more pleasures than an Instagram account. |
Read More: TheWrap |
38 | 2014-04-23 | Chris Cabin |
Jon Favreau's film comes off as flippant in its view of independent labor as a universally liberating experience for an artist and businessman. |
Read More: Slant Magazine |
16 | 2014-03-10 | Drew Taylor |
While the more down-to-earth Chef does offer some fascinating autobiographical dimensions, the film is also an overlong, unfunny, largely insufferable bore. |
Read More: The Playlist |