“Flamin’ Hot” is the story of Richard Montañez, the Frito-Lay janitor who channeled his Mexican American heritage and upbringing to turn Flamin’ Hot Cheetos into a snack that disrupted the food industry and became a global phenomenon.
Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia) was a poor Mexican kid who grew up in California. He turned to a life of crime to make ends meet for his family but decided to leave that behind him and eventually landed a janitorial job at a Frito-Lay factory. He is discouraged that people tend to dismiss him due to his lack of education and skin color, but that does not stop him from seeking out and befriending the engineer, Clarence (Dennis Haysbert), to learn more about the process of making the popular chips.
Once Frito-Lay hits some challenging economic times, Richard suggests adding hot chili spices to the chips, which would appeal to Latinos in America. He has trouble getting his idea to CEO Roger Enrico (Toby Shalhoub), but he eventually manages to get a hold of him and impress him with his thoughts.
“Flamin’ Hot” is a nice story about a man making it in the world with a good dose of humor sprinkled in. However, the film is also too heavy-handed at times. Let’s say there are a lot of speeches and moments about the importance of Latinidad. Of course, this is something that I appreciate as a Latina myself, especially since we don’t get to see ourselves in Hollywood stories. Still, it did feel like the film was pandering to its target audience.
Honestly, this film is also a bit too sanitized for me. The moral of the story here is that if you work hard, you can be successful too. But the film glosses over the fact that Richard was a janitor for ten years without receiving a promotion despite being knowledgeable about the engineering of the plant machinery and being friendly with everyone.
The film also focused a lot on the character of Richard, so I liked how the film was a character-driven story. The cast was also excellent. Jesse Garcia and Annie Gonzales played an adorable couple who believed in and supported each other. I hope we see more of these Latino actors in big projects in the future.
After seeing this movie, I did some research, and I was sad to discover that this story is not, in fact, true, according to an investigative article by The Los Angeles Times. I know it was based on the book that the real Richard Montañez wrote, but it is disheartening to hear that he has been lying for years and still managed to get a movie about him.
The film is a crowd-pleaser, garnering applause at its SXSW premiere. It didn’t knock my socks off or anything like that, but it had a solid direction from Eva Longoria, and I did enjoy it despite the gripes I had with it.
“Flamin’ Hot” recently had its World Premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival
