Chef, Various Cinemas

It's still under wraps - but at first glance Chef, which will open SXSW festival on March 7, might seem rather trite. A successful chef loses his high profile job at a restaurant and is forced to start all over again at the bottom: he opens up a food truck, rediscovers his love for food, reconnects with the things that really matter in life, gets back together with his ex-wife: you know the drill.

Except the interesting thing is how this corny-seeming plot about success, failure and self-discovery actually relates to the life of it's director, Jon Favreau. 

Having made a couple of fairly drossy blockbusters (Iron Man 2 and Cowboys and Aliens) Favreau decided to make a break with mainstream Hollywood and to start making more sincere, more heartfelt, lower budget indie flicks. Chef is the result of that decision. See any similarities between the film's protagonist and it's director? To drum home the point, the protagonist is played by Favreau and Robert Downey Junior and Scarlet Johansson, co-starring: the actors directed by Favreau in Iron Man. 

So this plot isn’t so much a mawkish story about success, failure and self discovery as it is a reflection on what it's like to be a high profile director in modern Hollywood. Chef, it turns out, is an unlikely film à clef.  

Though the trailer's not been released yet, its fair to expect this film to be light and amusing with a heated emotional core. And after starring in a string of sub-par action films, like The Avengers and Sherlock Holmes, its good to see that Downey Jr coming back to do what he does best: comedy.