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It’s not often I find a film that I agree with both my wife and teenaged daughter on, but Chef was that rarest of things, a film that thoroughly delighted the three of us.

Chef is two, possibly three, different films. It begins as a very talky, very, very sweary comedy-drama about Carl Casper, a chef played by Jon Favreau, working for Dustin Hoffman‘s Riva, a restaurateur who cares less for food than for the money it brings in. Carl’s kitchen is staffed by sous-chef Tony (Bobby Cannavale) and Martin (John Leguizamo); the three prepare for a visit from Oliver Platt‘s restaurant critic by putting together a menu careful planning, but are told to play safe by Riva, with inevitably disastrous results. The film then shifts gears, thanks to an intervention from Robert Downey Jr, playing Carl’s ex-wife’s other ex-husband, Marvin, who helps him buy a food truck. The truck is in Miami; Carl’s based in Los Angeles. The second act, then, is a road-trip buddy movie, with Carl, Tony and Carl’s son Percy bringing the truck back to California. (None of the foregoing, by the way, can be considered a spoiler; all this, and much more, is given away in the trailer.)

The story, though, is not what makes Chef such an utterly joyful film to watch; indeed, it’s a fairly simply plot, with a climax so obvious that if you can’t see it coming from very early on, then, really, you’re not paying attention. The film is Favreau’s baby — he produced, wrote, directed and stars in it. His dialogue is sharp, witty, and very funny, and Favreau, channelling James Gandolfini to great effect, plays off Carnavale and Leguizamo to create some excellent scenes. Chef, and Favreau, are quite clearly in love with food — the dishes he prepares in the course of the film, from the fussy, fancy creations for his restaurant to the simple spaghetti-and-onions-and-chillies-in-olive-oil supper he puts together for Scarlett Johansson‘s Molly, almost warrant a credit in their own right. Some of the cooking scenes are, frankly, little more than food porn — this is not a film to watch on an empty stomach.

Favreau is, clearly, the axis around which the film revolves, but he has assembled an exceptional cast around him. Carl’s scenes with Tony and, in particular, Martin sparkle with charm; stealing the show effortlessly is the ten-year-old Emjay Anthony, who brings a depth and a richness to Percy that suggests a long and successful film career for this star. The road-movie segment of the film, with Carl, Percy and Martin driving the food truck cross-country, and Carl teaching Percy to cook, is beautifully developed, with the relationship between Carl and Percy pitched perfectly between one-dimensional comedy and the saccharine-schmaltz that it could easily have descended into. That Scarlett Johansson, the woman with too many consonants in her name, and Dustin Hoffman are brought in just for minor supporting roles, and provide by no means the most impressive performances, should give some indication of the strength of the acting in Chef. Also quite excellent was Robert Downey Jr, clearly having a lot of fun in his one scene as Marvin. Possibly the weakest contribution was from Sofia Vergara, who is starting to look a little like she might have typecast herself as Modern Family’s Gloria, playing Carl’s ex Inez as, essentially, a Gloria with a less absurdly comedy Latina accent. To be fair to Vergara, in any other film she would have been entirely adequate and acceptable; such is the standard of acting in Chef, she simply cannot quite compete with the rest of the cast.

Social media plays an essential part of the story of Chef; since it’s one of the few story elements that’s not flagged up quite clearly in the trailer I’ll not dwell too much on the details. But I will say that Chef is one of the very few films that I’ve seen get technology right — the computers and devices the characters use display actual commercial interfaces, Percy’s explanation to Carl of how Twitter works is, unusually, quite accurate, and when Carl uses his iPhone to tweet, the interface we see is the actual, official Twitter app. A little thing, but it is refreshing to see a film that wants to use technology as a key plot device in fact show that it understands how that technology works, and is willing to use that technology intelligently enough that a social media network almost becomes a character of its own. (Don’t bother trying to follow @ChefCarlCasper or his food truck, by the way — the Twitter accounts do exist, but they’re private.)

Much of what I’ve seen in the cinema lately has disappointed, from the simply rather weak to the downright unacceptable; I was delighted, then, to see a film that reminded me of exactly why I go to the cinema. Chef is not a meaningful, deep, worthy award-winner of a film; it’s fun, it’s joyful, it’s excellent.