DIRECTOR: RATING:

Though I don’t and never will understand why good directors and big production houses spend their time, energy and money in regurgitating old films, actor-director Jon Favreau’s 2014 movie, Chef, is a pretty decent fit for the Indian context.

I mean, give desis an estranged papa-beta, kindle some pyaar while frying pyaaz and you are home safe.

Director Raja Krishna Menon’s Chef goes in for this full-on, giving us not one but two papa-betas, and then serving us familial love and warmth in mithai dabbas, on plates of hot, steaming food with that often-ignored side dish, chutney. These woozy moments are moving, but they are exploitatively so.

Menon goes in for advertisement-like affected short-cuts to evoke quick bursts of emotional release that move you, make you shed a tear, but leave you with nothing afterwards.

In this, as well as in casting, his Chef is smart and surefooted. He even throws in some fun asides to keep us entertained. But in telling us a story that’s coherent all through while treating us to a desi gastronomical experience that’ll make our stomachs rumble, it shortchanges.

Chef makes do with blurry bits, dots that don’t quite connect, and pretends that just because it has told us that its lead character is a star cook, we will believe.

For a film which calls itself Chef, there’s very little here to salivate over.