Snack food success story served with plenty of cheese

‘Flamin’ Hot’ stars Jesse Garcia, Annie Gonzalez.

The poster image for “Flamin’ Hot” — a feel-good comedy/success story that purports to be the true tale of how Frito-lay janitor Richard Montañez came up with the idea for a spicier version of the snack-food giant’s products, marketed to Latino customers — features a play on Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” painting from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but with a bright red Cheeto in the outstretched hand of Jesse Garcia as Montañez.

It’s a nod to the fact that this origin story, based on Montañez’s memoir, “A Boy, a Burrito and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive,” has a certain aura of myth around it, as if the precise details of its narrative require a leap of faith before they can be swallowed. (In 2021, as publicity for the film, directed by Eva Longoria, geared up, the Los Angeles Times wrote an exposé calling into question many of Montañez’s claims about his role in the invention of Flamin’ Hot-branded snack foods.)

This review will not resolve any of that, except to say that the film, written by Lewis Colick and Linda Yvette Chávez, does try to inoculate itself against accusations of stretching the truth, staging many scenes as the unreliable reminisces of its narrator, Richard, who after one particularly self-aggrandizing scene says, “Judy says I exaggerate this part” — referring to his wife (Annie Gonzalez) — before replaying the same scene in a manner probably a little bit closer to reality.

To say that the film is, well, cheesy, is no hyperbole. Although Garcia makes for a likable hero, the acting is broad, with the actor sporting a variety of obvious wigs that help carry the 40-yearold from a high school dropout to a goody-goody blue-collar worker and family man.