Flamin’ Hot review: spicy snack gets a tasty origin story
Eva Longoria’s assured movie-directing debut serves as a testament to diversity

Flamin’ Hot is about—you guessed it—the hugely popular Cheetos snacks that currently comes in a range of flavors, including Flamin’ Hot Limón, Flamin’ Hot Asteroids, and Flamin’ Hot Chipotle Ranch, which are all nestled within the Frito-Lay/PepsiCo corporate multiverse. But Flamin’ Hot is not exactly an IP cash grab like The Lego Movie, Battleship, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and, possibly, Barbie. The basis of Flamin’ Hot is Richard Montañez’s A Boy, A Burrito And A Cookie: From Janitor To Executive, a too-good-to-be-true, rags-to-riches tale that has been refuted by Frito-Lay and some of the company’s former employees, per a 2021 Los Angeles Times report.
The film adaptation holds the viewer’s interest because Richard, played by Jesse Garcia, is the unlikeliest of heroes. In the 1970s, before he becomes a custodian at Frito-Lay’s Rancho Cucamonga plant in Southern California, he peddles drugs and steals. In the early ’80s, he wises up and seeks a job when his wife, Judy (Annie Gonzalez), becomes pregnant. Without a GED and barely literate, he takes the Frito-Lay job application home for her to fill out. A gang connection helps him land an interview, which he promptly blows by getting caught in a lie when he misgenders the principal of San Bernardino High School while pretending to be an alumnus.
Despite the faux pas, supervisor Lonny (Matt Walsh) takes him on as a custodian. Richard’s profuse enthusiasm and eagerness to learn soon prompt his colleagues to pull him aside and caution him on the necessity of knowing his place. The seating protocols in the cafeteria make the cliquish divisions abundantly clear. Still, he ignores his coworkers’ admonition and befriends the jaded engineer, Clarence (Dennis Haysbert). Amid a series of layoffs and shift cuts, PepsiCo Chief Executive Roger Enrico (Tony Shalhoub) hosts a motivational video imploring plant employees to think like a CEO. Richard takes this message to heart, embarking on a quest to come up with the storied snack, then bypassing all the gatekeepers so he can pitch the idea to Enrico.
Garcia delivers a standout turn as Richard. It helps that he’s not yet a household name, so he isn’t carrying the baggage of any external frames of reference. His earnest and engrossing performance absolutely carries Flamin’ Hot. But since the movie heavily relies on extradiegetic narration, Garcia’s voiceover could use more bravado to match the admittedly embellished history.