‘Flamin’ Hot’ Review: Believe It or Not, This Neato Latino History Lesson Will Change Your Take on Cheetos
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic Americans can’t get enough of processed corn. They eat it for breakfast, in cereal form, and all throughout the day, snacking on cookies and crackers and chips, often washing it down with soda (sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, naturally).
Premiering at the SXSW Film Festival, “Flamin’ Hot” tells the backstory of Frito-Lay’s insanely popular, ultra-spicy line of snack chips — the ones that singe your taste buds and stain your fingers a radioactive red — as marketing guru Richard Montañez lays it out in his memoir, “A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive.” After a rough start selling drugs and hustling on the streets of East Los Angeles, Montañez got a job cleaning the machines at Frito-Lay’s Rancho Cucamonga plant and worked his way up to head of Multicultural marketing.
Along the way, he may or may not have invented the recipe for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Doritos, et al. Montañez claims the spicy slurry was his idea, although a recent Los Angeles Times investigation suggests he had nothing to do with it — which doesn’t make the movie any less enjoyable.
As we’ve established: Americans love corn, and “Desperate Housewives” star-turned-director Eva Longoria serves it up rich and tasty in her feature debut, scripted by Linda Yvette Chávez and Lewis Colick.
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