Reviews

(I apologize for my English, I'm not a native speaker). Yesterday, I watched "Chef" in the theater. The trailer and cast seemed promising and I was expecting to watch an interpretive movie with plethora of character developments, and probably a very exciting plot. To my bewilderment, the movie was lacking most qualities that constitute a good movie. The casting seemed out of place, both with Robert Downey Jr. and especially with Sofia Vergara. The plot revolved around a happy- ending story about the so-called "American Dream". It was so predictable that I felt like I have watched the movie before.

In my opinion, and with all due respect to people who liked the movie, I believe it is completely overrated. It is a fun movie to watch and laugh at, and it has its moments, but it is just a feel-good comedy. Yeah, it talks about the interactions between humans (father-son, ex-husband/ex- wife, etc), their challenges, their hopes and despairs, but it does not do a worthy job at that. It mostly sticks to the superficial clichés without succeeding to go any deeper. Although the movie is categorized as comedy, it is not even that funny. So all in all, watch the movie if you have nothing else to watch, but do it with low expectations.

As an Iranian, I watched the movie with tremendous doubt about how accurate and unbiased it will depict Iran, and Islamic revolution of 1979. And I have to say, I was bewildered! The locations, events, and dialogs are so accurate. There are few guff here and there, specially with the Persian accent of some of the supporting characters. However, the movie manages to provide a very solid story line, prefect acting, appealing dialogs all based on a magnificent plot. The first scenes set the tone for the rest of the movie, and offers a very quick, yet accurate introduction about the event, and for the rest of the movie it succeeds to keep the audience both interested and entertained.