Origin stories are having a moment.
There’s something about taking a familiar product and building out its mythos with an underdog tale about why we should feel sentimental about inanimate commercial objects.
We’ve already had the backstories of Air Jordans and Tetris, and upcoming are movies centred on Beanie Babies and Poptarts. Yes, Poptarts, the sugar-coated “breakfast” concoction of which Americans are so enamoured.
But this week, the spotlight is on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, the lobster-red nutrition-free food technically classified as an extruded snack. Geez, if knowing something is called an extruded snack isn’t enough to put you off them for life, nothing will.
Flamin’ Hot follows the template of the longshot-made-good, a rousing trope sure to stir those inspired heartstrings. “Aww, isn’t that nice,” you’ll say, because it does feel good to get behind the underestimated and undervalued.
We all want to feel as appreciated as we know we should be. It’s why these types of movies hit that warm-and-fuzzy spot, even when they’re little more than serviceable and enjoyable.
Directed by actor Eva Longoria, Flamin’ Hot is just that – an entertaining story of someone who beat the odds and social expectations.
Flamin’ Hot is based on the supposed real-life story of Richard Montanez (Jesse Garcia), a Mexican-American immigrant who wrangled his way into a job at the snackmaker Frito-Lay factory in California.
He was a high school dropout with some run-ins with the law, so the only job he could get was as a janitor. But Richard had bigger dreams and he would hassle the plant’s engineer (Dennis Haysbert) to teach him more about the machines.
Set in the early 1990s in the middle of a recession and job cuts, Flamin’ Hot positions Richard as a hustler looking for the next opportunity. He says he has a PHD, standing for “poor, hungry and determined”.
The real Montanez worked his way up from janitor to the executive floors, rising to be a bigshot marketer at Pepsi Co, which owns Frito-Lay. That part is undisputed. The part that is is how he got there.
Montanez claimed he invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos after a light bulb moment about the unrealised potential of a chilli flavour profile in the underserviced Hispanic community in the US. Others say he didn’t, and that the product was already on shelves by the dates in his timeline. And Frito-Lay’s official line suggests he did not.
While that’s all thorny and messy, Flamin’ Hot actually pushes all that aside to focus on the story Montanez has been pushing for years. And the fact is, no matter what the actual truth is, whether he invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or whether it came out of a lab in the American Midwest, the thematic strength of the movie still works.
It is a classic underdog story which layers not just how this character was invisible to the status quo who always think they know better, but how corporations and institutions have ignored whole communities and swathes of potential consumers because they don’t listen to them.
So, yes, there is something in Flamin’ Hot that makes you perk up when you hear the story of someone who did bust through those barriers.
Even if, ultimately, you are celebrating a product that made another massive corporation a lot of money, and one that your digestive system has never thanked you for.
Rating: 3/5
Flamin’ Hot is streaming on Disney+ from Friday, June 9