New this week on Disney + is the new biopic based on the man credited with the creation and development of the entire “spicy” component of the snack aisle, Richard Montanez. A fascinating rags to riches story, Eva Longoria’s directorial effort doesn’t manage to escape the familiar trappings and beats of a typical biopic. And even without knowing the full story ahead of time, the way the film unfolds manages to telegraph every move before it happens.

Richard Montanez (Jesse Garcia) grows up as someone who is never far from trouble. Running with a gang, stealing and selling drugs, Richard still maintains a fierce loyal streak as does Judy (Annie Gonzalez), the childhood best friend who becomes his wife. But when  Judy has their first child, Richard leaves all the gang lifestyle behind to help his family. After years of deadbeat jobs that end as quickly as they begin, Richard lucks into a job at the Frito Lay production plant.

Eager to improve his position, Richard befreinds head engineer Clarence C. Baker (Dennis Haysbert). Clarence sees something beyond his meager education and experience in Richard, something more than Richard’s supervisor Lonny Mason (Matt Walsh) does. Richard’s eureka moment is a spicy version of the classic cheeto to target the Latino market. But of course, that comes with much pushback from within the factory, as no one belives a janitor can come up with a new flavor. Not willing to accept this, Richard rocks the entire system by reaching out to company CEO Roger Enrico (Tony Shalhoub) directly.

Flaming Hot is the film equivalent of ‘just fine’. There’s nothing glaringly wrong here, the production looks good and they do a decent job with the period elements of the story as the film is mainly set through the mid 80’s to mid 90’s. But there’s also not a lot here that just jumps off the screen to grab you along the way either. As previously mentioned, there’s a lot of ‘plot by numbers’ here as we hit familiar tropes throughout the course of the film. Theres nothing worng here, but at the same time you could probably play the film in the background as you do other chores and not lose much in the process.

The acting is fine enough. Garcia is fine as the goofily engaging Montanez, even if the performance is more carefree than heavily dramatic. Haysbert is solid as he usually is, that American Express voiceover voice doing a lot of heavy lifitng here. The backstory with Richard’s parents Vancho (Emilio Rivera) and Concha (Vanessa Martinez) just feels underdeveloped and as such their performances suffer. But the real standout here is Annie Gonzalez. She imbues her performance of Judy with so much joy that she outshines everyone around here. It’s a singular perfomance that is much better than the simply ‘good enough’ that surrounds her and makes the audience wait for her to appear next.

But outside of Gonzalez’s performance, there’s really nothing new here for audiences to latch on to. So while Flaming Hot may not be as spicy as audiences are hoping for, it’s certainly watchable entertainment. But much like the snack food this film is named after, it’s not going to be overly filling and will likely have audiences searching for a real meal afterwards.