Spanish Film Festival Review - Two Many Chefs

Images courtesy of the 2023 HSBC Spanish Film Festival.

Two Many Chefs (2022) is Joaquín Mazón’s new comedy film that has heart but loses its edge with repetitive jokes and lazy storytelling. 

Mikel and Ander are the sons of respected restauranter Juan, but after one of the boys sabotages his father’s big night, Juan dives into a river, never to be seen again… Until thirty years later, when he returns with acute amnesia. Mikel now runs his dad’s restaurant and has a few big occasions coming up that his dad can help with, if only he can get his crazy father to remember who he is and how to make cream of sea urchin. 

The premise had me excited and was enough to push me through a thirty minute wait for some paella before the film started. My expectations weren’t high, but I did expect to be surprised. The first act hadn’t even concluded and I already knew what this experience would be like, and I was so right. Two Many Chefs was endearing, and it had very real moments of fun, but they were  few and far between in the predictable story and americanised jokes. The first issue I ran into was the son’s reaction to discovering his father was alive, after he had been thought dead for 30 years. Whatever reaction you’re imagining is acceptable for the gravity of that situation is about 90% too much for Mazón’s character Mikel. Instead, the son has a few moments of ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ before setting off to use his father to impress a food critic. It is a shallow and unfunny representation of family drama and if I just believed the story we were being fed, maybe I would’ve liked this movie more. 

The film lost me around the thirty minute mark, and not a single one of the incest jokes could rope me back in. Though I will admit, besides the couple in front of me, and my partner beside me, there wasn’t a single mouth inside the entire theatre that wasn’t laughing, which is something, right? I looked around trying to find what I was missing and saw that half of the audience was old or Spanish-speaking. I figure either the subtitle translation was hindering my ability to connect with the film and its incredibly cliche jokes, or that this movie was only funny to older folks, so good for them, and good for Mazón. 

Two Many Chefs is showing as part of the 2023 HSBC Spanish Film Festival. For tickets and more info, click here.