Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia), by his account, helped unlock the Latino market for Frito-Lay in the early 1990s by developing Flamin’ Hot Cheetos; a spicy variant of the already beloved Cheeto.  Working his way off of the streets as a petty thief and into the snack company as a janitor, Richard befriends Clarence C. Baker (Dennis Haysbert), a machinist at the facility, and begins to learn the ins and outs of the production process.  Recognizing untapped market potential – though, he did not have the formal education to back his hunch – he develops a spicy Cheeto with his wife, Judy (Annie Gonzalez), and sells the idea to Pepsi-Co CEO Roger Enrico (Tony Shalhoub) who takes a chance that resulted in one of the most popular selling snack brands in the world. 

Out of the South by Southwest film festival and into living room screens via Hulu comes Eva Longoria’s directorial debut, Flamin’ Hot.  From a script penned by Lewis Colick and Linda Yvette Chávez, based on Montañez’s 2013 memoir, the 99-minute Searchlight-produced biopic plays it fast and loose to the delight of festival audiences awarding it the Headliner prize at SXSW.  Balancing comedy with biopic, Longoria’s film has great excitement about its subject matter, and Garcia really leans into the eccentricities of the script and his character creates a jovial glimpse into the corporate world where people are treated as little more than a road to greater profits. 

The film centers itself around Garcia’s portrayal of Richard and he does a great job of steadying the tone.  Garcia is saddled with an excessive amount of voiceover, even by biopic standards. It seems heavy at times, but thankfully, the script seems to approach it all in a playful manner and Garcia brings an excitable tone to it all so that it does not feel stale.  There is a running gag throughout Flamin’ Hot where he describes the executives like they are leaders of a gang and Longoia’s blocking subsequently shows these stuffy white men in expensive suits seated at a heavy wooden table exploding in erratic outbursts over reports of poor sales results and dwindling profits and it lands with great success.  When he is on screen, Garcia brings a life to the text, though across its length, the performance does plateau and become one note as the script is not giving him too much to delve into and explore but rather treats him too much as an orator of this story instead of an active participant. 

One of the deepest flaws of the film on a subjective level – putting aside Frito-Lays’ statement that Montañez’s account is fully fictional and that the spicy Cheeto was in development long before he claims to have brought it to market – is that the script does not go deep enough into these characters making them more archetype and caricature instead of real people.  Flamin’ Hot strikes a better balance between the human story behind the product and the development process than some of its capitalist contemporaries this year, namely Air and Tetris, but it struggles when it tries to engage meaningfully in themes of heritage and being proud of where one comes from.  The script is careful to levy these attacks on identity against the various children of the cast for maximum emotional effect – young Richard (Carlos S. Sanchez), and later his two sons, Lucky (Hunter Jones) and Steven (Brice Gonzalez) – but it is handled so lightly and almost candy coated that it has all the depth of an 80s sitcom that wants to tackle some real issues.  Even when Richard is facing prejudice in the workplace, the film treats it very softly and this is when it can be freer to engage with this theme head-on and not have to realistically worry about subjecting child actors to this rotten facet of society, even if it is understood by the cast that the film is not endorsing these views. Ultimately, the film wants to stay lighthearted and through Richard’s rise in ranks at Frito-Lay, it proves its own point that non-engagement with bullheaded bigots and a focus on success can oftentimes be the best way to handle the schoolyard bullies, but on a filmic and storytelling level, audiences want to see even just a glimpse at these oafish antagonists having to really eat their own words more than the brief shots that are included. 

Where Flamin’ Hot excels, though, is its rather large ensemble cast and even though it does not dig as deep as audiences are seeking, the cast all perform well in their roles.  While everyone revolves around Richard, Haybert’s Clarence brings a warm and fostering energy to the narrative and Gonzalez’s Judy lends a fierce and unwavering support of her husband.  Such a positive relationship is always a welcome presence to see on screen. Matt Walsh also joins the cast as middle manager Lonny Mason who slowly puts down his clipboard and grows to support Richard’s ideas.  It is an amusing arc, but the script does treat his character rather singularly and outside of his large stroke actions at the end of the film, there is little growth for Walsh to capitalize on. The script mostly shakes off any opportunity to inject some workplace humor into the film outside of when Richard is learning about the lunchroom pecking order which neuters many comic avenues that the co-worker cast can explore.  There is some bantering between Shalhoub’s Roger and Peter Diseth’s James Dinely, a marketing manager, that is quite enjoyable, but it likewise is underutilized and underdeveloped. Tony (Bobby Soto) is also held back from being allowed to play more into the workplace humor, but he acts as a very nice, albeit subtle, foil to Richard while the script is careful to never outright condemn the situations that led to Tony’s falling back into drug running as a means of survival while Reaganomics trickled down nothing but pink slips to the nation’s blue-collar workforce.  

Longoria makes a great effort on her directorial debut, and it will be exciting to see this stage of her career continue to develop, but it is unfortunate that her first work will be asterisked with controversy. It is a tough line to walk as there are many films that take equal creative liberties when they are “inspired by a true story” to increase the dramatic tension and no one bats an eye, but the few times that the families and estates, or in this case, trademark holders, speak out against the film in question, it should be cause for alarm. Could the film have been more forthcoming in addressing this controversy head-on? Of course, and there is an easy, uninspired avenue to do so through an already tired title card with some phrasing of “a fictional account or true events” that started as a cheeky and amusing way to open a film but quickly got worn out as studios fell over themselves funding the next quicky biopic that played with the facts and made jokes out of its subject. The script does pepper in some details throughout that Richard was not the only person at Frito-Lay working on a spicy snack, and that the eventual product did not use Judy’s recipe, but these details pass by so quickly that it is easy to miss. It still begs to question, though, why is Flamin’ Hot put under such scrutiny to act as a historic document when films like Martin Scorsese’s exposé of the Bufalino crime family in relation to Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance, The Irishman (2019), get off easy despite also being based on a novel with known questionable accuracy. 

Regardless of the controversy, Longoria’s film is still an enjoyable experience, even if it treads pretty standard ground. There is a clear style and identity that she is in pursuit of, and at a high level, it is ultimately a film about accepting oneself and making the choice to succeed. It chronicles the American dream through the eyes of the marginalized. Flamin’ Hot is unapologetic in its embrace and celebration of its Mexican roots; a continuation of a pleasant trend seen in the 2023 slate between Netflix’s Chupa and the upcoming Blue Beetle from Warner Brothers. Without getting too trite about it, it is nice that the studios, like Richard in his memoir, are finally recognizing the power of the Hispanic and Latino market – who, according to the most recent census data make up 18.7% of the United States’ population and of that figure, 61.6% identify as Mexican Americans – by funding projects that fall outside of the scope of The Fast and the Furious franchise.