Flamin' Hot: A Review

 

FLAMIN' HOT

Does a biopic have to be completely accurate? No, I think many biographical films take liberties with their subjects. Flamin' Hot, the biopic of former Frito-Lay executive Richard Montanez, however, has met with especially ferocious criticism on its accuracy. Is it fact? Is it fiction? Is it a mix? Flamin' Hot works on a certain level if it meant to be crowd-pleasing. It does not, however, work if you find its efforts too hard.

Told in voiceover by its main character, Flamin' Hot tells the story of Richard Montanez (Jesse Garcia). Despite being the son of migrant workers, Montanez is endowed with fierce pride in his name and his Mexican heritage. He also is a firm outsider amidst the WASP world of California, finding comradery and companionship with the pretty Judy (Annie Gonzalez).

Unsurprisingly, Richard and Judy go from friends to lovers and cholos, doing all they can both legal and illegal to keep themselves afloat. Richard is determined to move upwards and eventually hoodwinks his way into being a janitor at a Frito-Lay plant, the first honest job he's had. Determined to move above the strict culture of Frito-Lay caste system, he nudges his way to being a protege to crabby engineer Clarence Carter (Dennis Haysbert).

Carter shows him all that he knows about the machinery, but Richard still cannot move up. More troubles come his way due to the evil Reagan Administration, whose economic policies endanger the plant's survival. Eventually, thanks to his cultural background, Richard sees that the Latino market is both massive and untapped. As he puts it, the reason Frito-Lay is struggling is because of "Brown neighborhood, white flavors". Why not create specific flavors for his community? Using his sons as guinea pigs, Richard Montanez creates the Flamin' Hot Cheetos. 

Showing pluck, determination and gumption, Montanez goes to the very top, directly calling Frito-Lay CEO Roger Encino (Tony Shalhoub). Encino is surprisingly enthusiastic about the Flamin' Hot Cheetos, but apparently no one else is. With no marketing and poor sales, it takes Montanez's barrio background to come up with guerrilla marketing to get the Flamin' Hot Cheetos noticed. Will it be enough to save his job and the plant?

Flamin' Hot has had, from what I understand, major reporting questioning the accuracy of the story. The veracity of Montanez's claims to have essentially invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos is extremely doubtful. Director Eva Longoria used the expression "his truth" to paper over the truth on the matter. Personally, any variation of "your truth" is a term that I detest. 

The truth (as opposed to Montanez's truth) on the matter is not something that I hold against Flamin' Hot. The film, while fudging the facts, is meant as an inspirational tale of someone overcoming great odds to become an American success story. As such, Flamin' Hot works well. The problems come from how Flamin' Hot stubbornly refuses to concede that it takes great creative license with the truth (vs. "his truth"). I accept that biopics are not one hundred percent accurate. There are composite characters, shifting timelines and even invented scenes that deviate from the facts. Flamin' Hot, for its part, may have gone into almost straight-up fiction and try to pass it off as fact. That is more troubling since, again from my understanding and I may be wrong, Montanez proclaims himself a devout Christian. How a devout Christian can perpetrate an alternate reality is something I cannot reconcile.

I am more puzzled by any suggestion that Montanez is a man of deep faith given how Flamin' Hot makes evangelical Christians less than pleasant people. This is captured by Richard's troubled relationship with his father, Vacho (Emilio Rivera). Vacho, if memory serves right, is a nickname stemming from "boracho", Spanish for "drunk". In voiceover, Richard informs us that Vacho has traded in booze for Jesus, but he is still portrayed as gruff, hostile and dismissive of his son's efforts. For someone whose life was supposed to have been changed by a personal relationship with Christ, Vacho hasn't changed save for his sobriety. Yet I digress.

Flamin' Hot, as I said, is meant more as a crowd-pleasing film than a straightforward narrative. It works on that level thanks to Jesse Garcia's performance. I could have done without the constant voiceover from Garcia, who seems determined to tell us all of Montanez's inner thoughts. That being said, I get where Lewis Colick and Linda Yvette Chavez's screenplay was going for with these narrations. They are peppered with Chicano lingo and the California Mexican-American worldview. When, for example, Montanez first starts working at the Frito-Lay plant, he struggles with the disrespect that he felt. "I had to mind my gangster," he tells us. Later on, he imagines how a Frito-Lay board meeting went by putting it in cholo terms. Referring to the board as "gangsters with money", Flamin' Hot shows these very white men speaking and behaving as though they were all cholos from the barrio.

As a Hispanic myself, I got the jokes and quips. I related slightly more only because I know people like Richard and Judy Montanez and the world they live in. I'm not completely of that world: I'm closer to a WASP than a cholo, one who prefers the white flavors of regular Fritos than the spicy Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Yet again, I digress.

Garcia is winning as the enthusiastic Montanez, a hustler who won't take "No" for an answer. His enthusiasm for all things makes Montanez an interesting character. At one point, he tells a job interviewer that he has a Ph.D.: poor, hungry and determined. Garcia also shows us Montanez's genuine anger at being held back over and over. He finds it frustrating to be overlooked, and Garcia makes that struggle relatable. As his pachuca girl, Annie Gonzalez does well as Judy, who supports her man even when she finds him difficult. In their smaller roles, Haysbert and Shalhoub also do good work as the cantankerous engineer and Frito-Lay CEO respectively. 

If Flamin' Hot will be remembered for anything, apart from the controversy over the film's accuracy, it will be because Diane Warren received her 15th Best Original Song Oscar nomination for The Fire Inside. Warren has yet to win a competitive Oscar, and The Fire Inside is her first nomination after receiving an Honorary Oscar. The Fire Inside is like Flamin' Hot Cheetos: spicy, with the hint of Hispanic kick to it. It was never going to win, but unlike her nomination for Tell It Like a Woman, few people doubted Flamin' Hot was a real movie. 

Flamin' Hot has the atmosphere of the California Chicano world down well. It makes its protagonist a pleasant, positive figure. Its accuracy may be in doubt, but there is a sincerity to it that makes it passable. 

Born Circa 1958

DECISION: C+