RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: In ‘Flamin’ Hot,’ the beauty is in the blemishes

As a professional communicator, I’m a sucker for a good story. But I’m also a journalist who was trained to make snap judgments — about people, organizations, causes, etc. And that’s a good way to miss a great story.

This is the column I was determined not to write.

At first, the prospect of sinking my teeth into the movie “Flamin’ Hot” wasn’t very appetizing. Since its June 9 release on Hulu and Disney+, the film has been heating things up among Latinos, who represent 1 in 5 Americans.

Directed by Eva Longoria, with an engaging script by Linda Yvette Chávez and Lewis Colick, the film tells the tale of Richard Montañez.

A former hoodlum and low-level drug dealer, and a high school dropout, the Mexican American put up with racism and low expectations. In 1976, he landed a job as a janitor at a Frito-Lay plant in Southern California. After layoffs at the plant in the 1980s, the story goes, Montañez followed Frito-Lay chief executive Roger Enrico’s directive to “think like a CEO.” With his wife, Judy, Montañez spiced up the snack company’s offerings to make them more appealing to underserved Latino customers.

In spotting the value of the U.S. Latino market — which in 2022 had a gross domestic product of more than $2.8 trillion, according to the nonprofit Latino Donor Collaborative — Montañez was way ahead of his time. And since he retired in 2019 as vice president of multicultural sales and community promotions for PepsiCo North America, Montañez has written two memoirs and given countless motivational speeches on the lecture circuit.

That’s where we met. In 2013, while he was still with PepsiCo, he and I shared a stage at an event in Oakland, Calif. We were joined by two other accomplished Mexican Americans: former astronaut José Hernández and comedian Cristela Alonzo.

Give Montañez some credit. He didn’t have anything handed to him on a silver platter. He is a hard worker with hustle who knows how to sell — especially himself.

What is in dispute, however, is Montañez’s repeated claim that he invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Others insist the spicy product was created in Chicago and Detroit.

Meanwhile, Frito-Lay has made hash out of this story by issuing different — and sometimes contradictory — statements over the years. Despite telling the Los Angeles Times in 2021, through a spokesperson, that it does not “credit the creation of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or any Flamin’ Hot products” to Montañez, the company later acknowledged that he did play a role in the launch of a related product — Flamin’ Hot Popcorn — in 1994.

The film gives a nod to the various claims about the origin of the Flamin’ Hot product line and eventually settles on describing Montañez as someone who helped create and market it.

In another statement, released after the Times article, Frito-Lay said the same thing and emphasized that the product’s success was a team effort that included Montañez. Frito-Lay said in a recent statement to “Today” that the film is “Montañez’s story, told from his point of view.”

Latinos have mixed feelings about the movie, with some saying they don’t see themselves in the blue-collar success story. Others questioned Montañez’s motives.

On RogerEbert.com, movie critic Monica Castillo asked: “What does it say when we lionize a person who says they did something they didn’t and hold them up as a pillar of our community, who, if anything, perfected selling our connections to our culture back to ourselves as a form of identity consumerism?”

The country’s largest minority group already argues over just about everything. Why not add a movie to the list? Poll three Latinos, you get five opinions.

Here are a few more.

Initially, I wasn’t excited about another movie where the protagonist starts off as a street criminal. I’ve had my fill of stereotypes. I was also a bit embarrassed that our hero’s claim to fame was allegedly inventing, of all things, a snack. I thought: “Seriously, Hollywood? Is that all we get?”

But now, having seen the movie, I understand there is enormous value in this story, and much of it stems from the blemishes, imperfections and flaws of the characters. The protagonist isn’t some Ivy League-educated Mexican American neurosurgeon who grew up living a charmed life in the suburbs.

This movie may not be 100 percent accurate. If it were, it would be called a documentary. This is a gritty yarn about redemption, comebacks, second chances and long shots that unexpectedly come in.

Boy, does that sound familiar. Replace the Mexican American janitor in Southern California with an Italian American boxer in Philadelphia, and you get the picture.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.