Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2026 Review! The United States doesn’t take cheese very seriously. Europe and other places have an esteemed title dubbed “cheese monger,” which is a “sommelier of cheese” who guides customers on pairings, flavor profiles, and storage. In Europe, it’s a prestigious career, but in the States, it’s just a person who barely scrapes by working at the grocery store. Due to social media, cheese mongering in the Home of the Brave is starting to gain some traction.
The documentary The Big Cheese, directed by Sara Joe Wolansky, follows an eccentric team of underdog American cheese mongers who attempt to be the first U.S. group to win at the Mondial du Fromage, which is the Olympics of cheese in France. The team is coached by Adam “Mr. Moo” Moskowitz, a formerly wild white rapper who is as passionate as anyone can be about cheese. His star team member is Courtney Johnson, an academic who wants to open her own cheese business but can’t get a bank to finance it. Then there’s Sam, who is just happy to be there, and other people around the team question why Moskowitz would choose someone who seems to be lacking in cheese monger experience. Adam also has many doubts about Sam, leading up to and during the big competition.
I’ve always loved cheese, besides being mildly allergic to it, but I’ve never had the passion for fromage that these people display. Commitment, knowledge, and intensity are contagious (for me at least), so no matter how silly the subject may seem, the people in this doc make it legit. The blind taste tests, the cutting, presentations, and Courtney even taking a trip to Sweden for research, prove that they’re in it to win it.
“…eccentric team of underdog American cheese mongers…”
Learning about all the different types of cheeses is fascinating as well, because, as it says in the movie, Americans mostly know Kraft singles and not much else. It would be fun to rewatch this film while sampling the varying types, while the cheese mongers lay out the histories and reasons why certain types are their favorites.
Aside from the cheese, Adam Moskowitz is an interesting punk rock type of figure himself. He was a tech bro who lost his fortune in the crash, decided to become a rapper (but was no Eminem from his own admission), and then finally succumbed to the family cheese business, which became his next obsession besides his wife and family. Adam discloses that during the early years of going to the big Mondial du Fromage, he would DJ and get out of control with substance abuse. It was when his son told him that he was scared of him that Adam realized he had a problem. He was driving to commit suicide when his wife Jessica told him not to because his daughter would not even remember him, and it clicked that life was worth living.
The Big Cheese is more thrilling and intense than you would expect a movie about cheese to be, and like any good documentary, that’s thanks to the director Wolansky and the subjects (such as a woman named Kyra, who thinks she may be the first black cheese monger from the States). We get to see the struggles of Sam, Adam, and Courtney, and like with Rocky 4, we root for the underdog Americans to surprise the big bad Europeans.
"…We get to see the struggles of Sam, Adam, and Courtney, and like with Rocky 4, we root for the underdog Americans to surprise the big bad Europeans. "
