Flamin’ Hot Review

BY ALEX DE VORE alex@sfreporter.com

Despite the Los Angeles Times reporting in 2021 that Pepsico/Frito-Lay janitor-turned-exec Richard Montañez did not actually invent the enduringly popular Flamin’ Hot Cheeto snack, actor-turned-filmmaker Eva Longoria sails full steam ahead in her first feature, Flamin’ Hot, a feel-good biopic that might actually feel alright if the ultimate premise weren’t that a dude helped a mega-corporation figure out how to market to Brown folks better and thus make way more money.

Oh, it’s not that Longoria’s adaptation of Montañez’s book, Flamin’ Hot: The Incredible True Story of One Man’s Rise from Janitor to Top Executive isn’t fun enough or heartwarming enough or even sincerely funny once or twice, more like it suffers under the weight of its own inaccuracies and formulaic storytelling. One assumes a movie based on real events will take artistic license and pad the truth, that’s a given. But knowing ahead of time that the central plot point—namely, Montañez purportedly bucked convention and corporate nay-sayers by calling up then-Pepsico top boss Roger Enrico to pitch a spicy chip—never actually happened ultimately cheapens the emotional beats, leaving viewers feeling as burned as the snack on which it’s based.

In Hot, Longoria follows Montañez from clever child entrepreneur selling his mom’s burritos at his elementary school to the executive suite at the Rancho Cucamonga Frito-Lay plant in which he worked, making pit stops along the way at young parenthood, drug dealing and a complicated fatherly relationship. Oh, and he saves the chip factory and everyone’s jobs, too. Jesse Garcia (Quinceñera) plays the adult version of Montañez, a wide-eyed optimist who turns a janitor job into a learning opportunity and, along the way, teaches the ’90s corporate drones what it means to make a spicy snack, thereby tapping into the Chicano market like no mainstream company had before. Garcia narrates the film, too, and represents the best it has to offer, even if Gentefied star Annie Gonzalez does provide context and levity as Montañez’s wife, Judy. She just doesn’t have enough to work with, which often relegates her to pseudo-emotional moments before we get back to Richie eating elote while a light bulb flashes above his head.

Elsewhere, screen vets like Dennis Haysbert and Tony Shalhoub deliver lines such as, “You can do it, Richie!” Of course this film needs folks like that, but Shalhoub’s turn as Enrico feels like he was told to bring Santa Claus energy to his scenes, which makes for a certain cheesy warmth that seems unlikely for a top business guy in the ’90s—it’s weird.

If we’re counting teen hero Miles Morales as a SpiderMan across both film and video games, that brings the tally of folks who’ve donned the Marvel hero’s mask in recent years to something like six performers since Sam Raimi’s inaugural 2001 live action Tobey Maguire movie. Given Marvel’s propensity for multiversal travel, too, perhaps no property better fits the concept of infinite realities (sorry, Dr. Strange). But whereas a titanic pop culture phenomenon like Rick & Morty takes the nihilistic route by positing that an infinite number of possibilities means nothing truly matters, filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Clone High) wager that even just one good soul can effect change when ennui sets in—that everything everywhere matters a whole lot.

In Sony/Marvel’s newest animated entry, SpiderMan: Across the Spider-Verse—the sequel to 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse—our hero Miles (Shameik Moore) is still thinking about Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) from his last outing (it’s complicated, but she’s from another dimension; they met). That adventure, however, wound up destabilizing time ’n’ space, leading to a sort of unpredictable system of portals that throw folks from any conceivable universe into other ones. 2013 video game BioShock Infinite would remind us that inter-dimensionality consists of both constants and variables—there is always a Spider-Man—though since Miles got his powers from a radioactive spider not of his own dimension, he’s thrown things out of wack pretty much everywhere. Understand? Good!

After tangling with a villain called Spot (Jason Schwartzman) Miles learns there’s a sort of Hall o’ Spider-People in the distant future of a neighboring dimension to his, and its leaders (Oscar Isaac and Issa Rae) spend their days making things right across the multi-verse. Miles, though, isn’t invited to the HQ for every conceivable Spider-Man/Woman/Enby/Child/ Horse, and learning why proves a total bummer for the lad; he’s just not like the others and they’re all trying to bring him down!

Across the Spider-Verse somehow ups the quality of presentation from its first most excellent iteration by merging so many types of animations, frame rates and design aesthetics. The stacked streets of a hybrid Mumbai/Manhattan in one universe are particularly gorgeous, and notable as well are the ’70s/clip art accoutrements belonging to Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya), a character that simultaneously lambasts and pays respect to the anarchic leanings of the genre’s roots. Moore has really settled into the Miles role, too, phasing effortlessly between the confidence of superpowers and the challenges of teen-dom. Steinfeld similarly nails her Gwen Stacy performance, as do actors in brief roles including Andy Samberg, Yuri Lowenthal and Mahershala Ali.

Thus, while the creators of Across the Spider-Verse aim squarely at kids, the adults who take them to the show or continue to live out their love affairs with comics-turned-movies, kids or no, will find lots to love. Still, we can only hear that family matters or love con- quers all so many times before the law of diminishing returns sets in. Luckily, this one is so beautiful and fast-paced it’s often on to the next big thing before we have time to nitpick. Spidey swings, villains get bad and explosions flare in the distance—that’s pretty much all folks are looking for from movies like this.

(ADV) Violet Crown, Regal, PG, 140 min.

THE BOOGEYMAN

5 + TOOTH SCENE IS FREAKY

- MORE CLICHES THAN YOU CAN COUNT

Director Rob Savage tackles The Boogeyman, a new horror-lite flick based on the 1973 Stephen King short story of the same name. Despite the mature themes and age of its source material, Savage’s adaptation sometimes seems like it was ripped straight out of an episode of the über-campy 90s’ Goosebumps television series—and it’s not his first attempt at horror. 2020’s Host and 2021’s Dashcam were both new additions to the then-recent subgenre known as computer screen horror. This time, though, the plot has nothing to do with screens, which reveals Savage’s weaknesses when it comes to directing a more traditional form of horror. The Boogeyman suffers from beginner’s cliches that will likely even bore the more modern audience to which he previously catered.

The story revolves around a therapist (Chris Messina, Birds of Prey) and his two daughters (Sophie Thatcher and Vivien Lyra Blair) who are still grieving after their mother’s accidental death. While the prem-

FLAMIN’ HOT Directed by Longoria

With Garcia, Gonzalez, Haysbert and Shalhoub Hulu, Disney+, PG-13, 99 min.

Even so, you’d have to be heartless to not get a little pumped for the movie version of Montañez as he shakes things up and gets those hot chips made. New Mexicans might be proud to know it was filmed here, too. Still, if you go looking into the story too deeply, those feelings dissipate easily. Whoever invented those chips, good on ‘em, maybe, just...are we really supposed to root for big business? Gross. SPIDER-MAN: ise promises to help forge a compelling and emotional story, it actually cheapens the horror at play and fails to properly contextualize the movie’s monster—arguably the oldest in the monster pantheon. Actually, maybe it’s the monster that cheapens the emotional side of the story, but you can’t really tell what’s supposed to be more important—the scares or the parallels to trauma and grief. Audiences are expected to connect said trauma to the literal monster-in-thecloset, but Savage doesn’t make it worth our while; I stopped caring as soon as one character said, verbatim, “They call it…The Boogeyman.” Despite his sincere stab at representing the emotional fallout that occurs after experiencing the death of a loved one, Savage cannot deliver scares or thrills through his actors without making the viewer (and, frankly, the performers) feel awkward.

It’s not Messina’s or the kids’ fault, though, more like The Boogeyman is eye-rollingly lazy in its creature design, leading to a tall and borderline goofy creature with no unique physicality or features. This renders the monster instantly forgettable. As such, the only frights The Boogeyman knocks out of the audience are cheap shots; loud, drumkit-heavy jump scares more likely to piss you off than honestly surprise or alarm. Instead, it feels more like Savage steals his scares from you, just like his movie steals your money and time.

You could probably make fun of The Boogeyman with your friends, but if you were expecting an original take on an overdone monster concept, be prepared to leave the theater exhausted instead. (Noah Hale) Violet Crown, Regal, PG-13, 98 min.

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