For some reason, 2023 seems to be the year that every corporation in America is getting some sort of biopic about them. We’ve already seen Air, Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, Blackberry, Spinning Gold, and Tetris release in the first half of 2023. Later this year, we’ll see The Beanie Bubble, focused around – you guessed it – Beanie Babies, and Dumb Money, a biopic on the famous GameStop stock short squeeze of January 2021. This leaves us here, at the midpoint of the year, returning to our favorite corporate friends in Hollywood for another spin of the “Which company needs a movie?” wheel. The answer? Obviously, Frito-Lay, and specifically Cheetos. And more specifically, the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto. Yes, you heard that right.
Flamin’ Hot tells the story of Richard Montañez, a poor, Mexican man who gets a job as a janitor at a Frito-Lay factory in California. Montañez, who proclaims he always had a mind for machinery, is fascinated with the production process for the company’s popular products: Doritos, Fritos and Cheetos. When Frito-Lay hits hard financial times and begin laying off workers, Montañez, so he claims, invents the Flamin’ Hot line of products by dipping into his roots, and subsequently a previously untapped Latino market in America.
What surprised me most about the film as I was watching was just how fun it was. I’ve found that these kinds of biopics, in my experience, work best when they don’t take themselves too seriously. Instead, when these movies opt to tell a light-hearted story interlaced with fun jokes, where they understand the stakes may not get lower, they excel. Luckily, Flamin’ Hot did just that, and I found myself to be engaged even more so in the film’s silly story.
I also found myself really impressed with how funny Flamin’ Hot is. There’s some pretty killer jokes, and overall, it just made me feel really good. I have to give the film credit for that.
However, the issue arises, as with any biopic, that the plot is entirely predictable. Take away the fact that there is scrutiny over how true the story that the film is based on actually is, and what you have left is extremely by the numbers. I didn’t find myself surprised by how the film played out, and it really didn’t do enough either to rise above the predictability, like a film like Air does. It was a very safe movie that didn’t take a lot of risks. That’s not a bad thing, but it doesn’t help the movie’s case either.
I did find myself, however, surprised at how willing the movie was to dive into race relations issues that plagued the era. In the time the film was set, Mexican immigrants were looked down on as second class, and often had a hard time finding any sort of work at all. Even when they did, it wasn’t great work. Seeing these issues play out was wholly surprising for a movie like this, but I think it only helped the film.
Final Thoughts
Flamin’ Hot provides nothing more than a good time with a pleasant biopic that doesn’t take itself too seriously. In a year destined to go down in history as the year corporations emptied their pockets to make movies about them, this one lands among the better half. However, the film didn’t really do enough to stand out from the crowded sea of similar films to really rise above. You’ll most certainly enjoy watching Flamin’ Hot, but I would expect it to be lost in the shuffle of the myriad films just like it over the years.
