# Chef! (1999)

### reviewed by
James Brundage

filmcritic.com presents a review from staff member James Brundage. You can find the review with full credits at http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f2b46/c84aaa4bdefe1885882568b1000b1e14?OpenDocument

    Chef! (1999, NR)

    Directed by Jean-Marie Teno

    As Reviewed by James Brundage

It is bad enough when you have a ninety-minute film that feels like two hours, but when you have a 61-minute film that feels like two hours, you know you're in trouble. Such is the case with Chef!, a disorganized documentary probing the injustices in the society of Cameroon.

Chef! is a film that uses a personal narrative to tell us three things that we already know: that lynching isn't a good idea, that patriarchal marriages suck eggs, and that dictatorships are unjust institutions. These three things add up to another simple general impression: that you can't get any sort of justice in the society of Cameroon.

Were Chef! a straight forward narrative film, I would bash it for meandering its way to a stopping point (note: not an end, this film does not end). As a documentary, I must be slightly more creative and state that the film is disorganized. Each type of injustice takes about twenty minutes of time and has no sort of transition into the next injustice. A good documentary should flow like an academic conversation, and Chef! has all of the controlled flow of a series of CNN factoids.

Chef! serves to somewhat redeem itself by having a nice flow inside of each subsection. The subjects are captured and edited well, so that, when all is said and done, a sense of moribund comedy resounds around the society of Cameroon. Sadly, these `jokes' are mostly unintentional, and are come too little too late to save a documentary that has no concept of pacing or organization.

    **

    In French

    Distributed by California Newsreel

    A.k.a. Chef!

-- Christopher Null - cnull@mindspring.com - http://www.filmcritic.com

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