A Janitor Sweeps Up Big Success
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
Happy Summer, 2023
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
Flamin' Hot (Eva Longoria) rated PG-13 99 min.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: (Note: Please don’t confuse Flamin’ Hot with the new Pixar/Disney animated feature, Elemental {Peter Soth}, [which I think I can wait for it to be on Disney+ streaming] even though the latter features a fire-being, Ember, trying to connect with a water-being, Wade. I’m sure she’s “flamin’ hot” in more ways than one, is from a looked-down-upon-heritage in Element City [which connects to the Chicano-rejection in the movie actually being reviewed here], and offers another feel-good-ending, but for now we’re focused on fiery snacks.) We see a good bit of the life of Richard Montañez (played by Jesse Garcia as an adult), born in the U.S. to Mexican parents (not clear for me if they were undocumented) who worked as field laborers in a southern CA vineyard, with his father, Vacho Montañez (Emilio Rivera), a tough disciplinarian toward his son. In school, Richard is bullied by some White punks, but he turns the tables by bragging about how delicious his bean burrito lunch is, one of the thugs tries and likes it, soon Richard’s selling them to many classmates, bringing in a lot of cash, but when he tries to spend it he’s arrested due to the cops refusing to believe he could have that much money without stealing it; on another positive side of his public school years (which he didn’t finish, a later problem) he meets future wife Judy (Annie Gonzalez as an adult), with them as teens into gang lives of selling drugs (with some footage/ commentary on the 1960s Chicano movement), which they put behind them after she gets pregnant.
With the arrival of a second child, Richard gets truly serious about finding a stable job which he does with the help of former-gang-friend Tony Romero (Bobby Soto), as a janitor at the Frito-Lay plant in Rancho Cucamonga, CA even though he gets caught in a lie on his resumé (high-school grad?) by floor manager Lonny Mason (Matt Walsh) who takes a chance on this young guy because he’s seen that Mexicans employed there put in good effort. Richard works hard but gets regular distain from the Whites. Then, despite some initial resistance from Black engineer maintenance leader Clarence C. Baker (Dennis Haysbert)—himself a victim of the plant’s rigid hierarchies even as he works diligently—Richard soon becomes his unofficial apprentice as he truly wants to understand the workings of the machines responsible for pouring out all of those big bags of corn-based-snacks.
During the Ronald Reagan Presidency, though (1981-'88), economic hardships begin to hit low-paid-workers (the movie’s premise, but I do agree), Frito-Lay profits decline, there’s constant fear this plant will be shut. In response, Roger Enrico (Tony Shalhoub), a CEO within PepsiCo (owns Frito-Lay), puts out what he considers to be an inspirational video for his workers, encouraging them to “think like a CEO.” Richard takes this literally, is inspired by how his youngest son Steven (Brice Gonzalez) likes the taste of spicy corn (elotes), determines to find a peppery-coating for his factory’s chips in order to better market them to Hispanic customers, goes through extensive trial and error to finally find success. Once again, Vacho dismisses his son’s idea, further pushing them apart even as it draws Judy closer to her husband. Richard manages to find Enrico’s phone number, calls him, explains he’s just a janitor but has a useful idea, so the boss listens, tells Richard to send him some of the proposed product, likes it, invites Richard in to pitch his concept to company honchos which he successfully does when he gets excited, deviates from his script, speaks from the heart, so product production is ordered; ⇒however, sales are weak, experiment’s about to be cancelled when Richard’s kids make the argument there’s no advertising for the Flamin’ Hot line, so Richard recruits anyone he can to simply give away bags of the snacks to the community (promoting it with “Food that tastes like home.”) which does increase sales, then leads into a massive increase in production.
Clarence finally gets the promotion he’s long desired and earned, but Richard’s still a janitor when Lonny tells him to go clean an upstairs area where he finds Enrico waiting, tells Richard he’s been promoted to Director of Multicultural Marketing which gets a big round of applause from his fellow workers.⇐ Pre-ending-credits-graphics note Richard retired years later (2019), still married to Judy.
So What? In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s G. Allen Johnson Longoria said: “I wasn’t interested in making a movie about Flamin’ Hot Cheetos […] The movie explores how opportunities are not distributed equally. And that was in the ’70s-’80s-’90s. Today there is still no infrastructure for opportunity (for minorities). We explore racism and classism in the film, but what you walk away with is this lesson in resilience taught to us by Richard, who faced all these things and approached it with dignity and grace.” Clearly, she (born in Corpus Christie, TX to Mexican parents) wanted to make her dramatic narrative directorial debut (she helmed the documentary La Guerra Civil [2022] about 2 boxers whose bout divided Mexican and Mexican-American fans) with a story that gives a positive presentation to someone from her heritage who succeeded in life despite being dismissed—just as she says she was early in her career—as being incapable of making a notable mark in the world, so it’s about Richard triumphing over dismissal, racism, assumptions of his inadequacy. You can also find her talking directly about what she intends as “A love letter to the Mexican-American community” in this video (6:27), beginning with a short report on the status of the DACA (“Dreamers”) program which would ideally provide a path to U.S. citizenship to young immigrants who were brought here illegally, then at about 2:00 it shifts into the focus on Flamin’ Hot.
However, despite Longoria’s defense of the movie as being about a dedicated man’s desire to find accomplishments in the face of rejection (with her continued support of his interpretation of the “flaming’ hot” history), the veracity of Montañez being the one who actually came up with the concept of a chili-coating for Cheetos, Doritos, Fritos, and similar products has been challenged in recent news articles despite the movie being screened at the White House with support from President Biden for its depiction of a self-determined minority man’s eventual success despite the initial lack of support for his concept of broadening Frito-Lay’s snack appeal to a considerably wider market. While the company praises Montañez for his successful ambition/valid contributions to expanding their reach to Hispanic buyers, they provide no support for his being the “flamin’ hot” originator. (I’m surprised I haven’t heard anything yet from Kevin McCarthy, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz slamming Biden for supporting this movie, but I guess they’re all too busy trying to come up with defenses for Donald Trump's 37 indictments—plus “valid” consternation over “dangerous criminal” Hunter Biden.)
You can get considerably more details on the invention-controversy from these articles in The New York Times and (Great Britain’s) The Guardian, which note possible discoveries of how to raise the temperature of these “corny” products from a company research team in the Midwest or a Frito-Lay group in Plano, TX (near Dallas). Montañez acknowledges simultaneous research into this product may have happened without shared knowledge of what was going on in different locations, but he still sticks by his story as the accurate version, properly presented in Longoria’s movie according to the real Richard. So, would you be positively moved in watching this story about a former drug dealer/gang member who did rise from janitor to corporate executive or would you dismiss the whole thing given the fairly-convincing-evidence provided by the corporation that actual timing of events doesn’t support what Richard (and Eva, who stands by his defense) presents as his main claim to fame: the ongoing success of these “hot in a good way” snacks? I tend to connect with the former response as this man did work his way up from obscurity (with little support in his early years except from within his own family) to becoming an icon of respectability within a society that so often has little use for those of his background (except as minimum-wage [or worse] workers in cleaning/back-of-house-restaurant/landscaping/construction jobs, often taking on tasks that many non-Hispanic U.S. citizens seem to feel is beneath them, leaving these necessary occupations to the “wetbacks").
Surprisingly, with all the current verbal/political hostility toward immigrants from anywhere south of the Rio Grande, especially from the governors of Texas and Florida, I’ve not been aware of anyone prominent in the news media degrading Flamin’ Hot and its origin-story-controversies as somehow supporting their anti-immigrant-rantings because it supposedly gives credit to people like these when none is due, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Ron DiSantis tries to convince Richard Montañez to get on a bus to Tijuana with the promise of an even better future there (although I think that with a current net worth of about $15 million Richard doesn't need any “generous” offers from Mr. Disney-phobe).
Bottom Line Final Comments: The CCAL’s not exactly wild about this movie, with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at 68%, the Metacritic average score at 58%, but if you’re not put off by the conflicting reports of how true the invention-facts are, can just appreciate the foundational concept of a man given little worth outside of his own (often denigrated) community who pushed himself against all odds to find success when it was likely going to be denied to him throughout his life, I think you’d find this story to be inspirational, heart-warming, and a joy to watch. (Although with all the brouhaha about veracity here, I’m inclined to be a bit cautious with my rating because of a concern that when we see something that claims to be “inspired by a true story” we can too easily be focused on the assumed-“true”-aspect more so than the “inspired”-premise which can give more creative license to the filmmakers than we normally get much chance—or make the effort—to challenge [unless the events depicted clearly reject documented facts as seen in Quentin Tarantino’s recent works about Allied killings of the Nazi high command—Inglourious Basterds, 2009—revenge against slave-owners in the Old South—Django Unchained, 2012—the Tate-La Bianca murders by the Manson Family—Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 2019—all of which were intended to be seen as alternative histories].) If you do care to watch Flamin' Hot, you’ll need to be a subscriber to either Disney+ or their corporate-sibling, Hulu, where you won’t pay extra for this streaming (or if you want to try a 1-month-trial, the former will cost you $7.99, the latter also $7.99 for the most basic plans, or even bundle them for $9.99 monthly, which would offer lots of additional viewing during that exploratory period with plenty to watch while chomping on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos).
Or, maybe you’d just be content with listening to my review-wrap-up Musical Metaphor, “It’s My Life,” by the Animals (1965 Best of the Animals album, written by non-Animals Roger Atkins and Carl D’Enrico) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx_ccpYv6Bc which came to me when I heard it on the radio last weekend while driving to my local 7-Eleven to (once again) buy the daily newspapers that weren’t delivered that morning. While in this movie Richard generally pushes down all the crap dished at him, keeping an upbeat disposition as he tries to make his life better, the song’s attitude is more harsh: “It’s a hard world to get a break in / All the good things have been taken / […] It’s my life, and I’ll do what I want / It’s my mind, and I’ll think like I want / Show me I’m wrong, hurt me sometime / But some day, I’ll treat you real fine” “When I openly lie / And live on their money / Believe me, honey […] I ain’t no saint / No complaints / So girl, throw out / Any doubt.” Yet, Montañez’s situation is as bad as what’s in this song even though that doesn’t keep him from wanting to move beyond his past life of petty crime and little education in order to provide for a better future for his wife and kids. He’s not ashamed of his heritage, just aware of how it unfairly limits his person and potential in the minds of those who assume so little of him until he (actually or fictionally) provides a means of helping his fellow workers (because sagging sales were driving the feared reality of shutting down the Rancho Cucamonga plant) as well as proving his actual worth to himself and those closest to him. Maybe he’s not the one who specifically spiced-up those snacks, but the concept of how a downgraded person finds a means to rise above limited expectations is marvelous to see, even if it may trend toward contested fiction than the specific facts within this individual case.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options of cinematic topics which you might want to read about: (1) IMDb's 10 most anticipated movies of the summer (some have already opened); (2) Box-office disaster for
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