Flamin' Hot (2023)

Streaming Now on Disney+

Rating: 7.0

Flamin’ Hot is a fun, feel-good story. It’s not anything you haven’t seen before, but the main character is likeable and the movie is pretty inspiring. The legitimacy of this story is definitely in question, and the film definitely feels like the events are too good to be true at times. But I mean, when your main character narrates the film like Luis in Ant-Man, there’s bound to be some stretching of the truth. It’s an entertaining, inspirational watch so it should be able to please everyone… there’s just nothing that really makes it stand out in my mind.

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Premise: This is the inspiring "true" story of Richard Montañez who, as a Frito Lay janitor, disrupted the food industry by channeling his Mexican heritage to turn Flamin' Hot Cheetos from a snack into an iconic global pop culture phenomenon.

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Searchlight Pictures

Directed by Eva Longoria

Screenplay by Lewis Colick & Linda Yvette Chávez

Based on the book “A Boy, A Burrito and a Cookie” by Richard Montañez

Cast: Jesse Garcia, Annie Gonzalez, Dennis Haysbert, Tony Shalhoub, Hunter Jones

Runtime: 1hr 39min

Rating: PG

Biography, Drama

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IMDb Rating: 6.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%

RT Audience Score: 90%

RT Critic Average: 6.1/10

RT Audience Average: 4.4/5

Metacritic Score: 58

Letterboxd: 3.0/5

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Fun Fact: Frito Lay informed the producers of this film that the story was false in 2019. But they went ahead with the film anyway.

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