2026 / Dir. Matt Johnson
Rating: 4/5
Watch if you like: Anthony Bourdain; The Holdovers; Adventureland; plummeting so far into the depths of your own lies and delusions that you accidentally become a world-famous chef and travel documentarian.
In Tony, writer/director Matt Johnson and star Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) had the unenviable task of tackling beloved food and travel icon Anthony Bourdain, a man who logged hundreds of hours in front of the camera and, if you were a fan, probably felt like your favorite curmudgeonly uncle. How do you approach a man so many people feel like they know so well? Go back to a time before he was ever famous.
Fictionalizing parts of the early chapters of Bourdain’s breakout book Kitchen Confidential, Tony opens at Vassar College in 1975 before summer break. Tony is trying to get a fellowship so he can spend his summer goofing off in New York City and toss off a nonsense novel that he pitches as a cross between George Orwell and Jack Kerouac to a group of disinterested professors. Confident that he’s god’s gift to the world, he tells everyone he knows that he basically got the fellowship already, including a high school crush, Nancy (Emilia Jones, CODA), whom he accosts at a college bar surrounded by a group of hostile girlfriends.
He, of course, doesn’t get the fellowship, and the only thing he can think of to not embarrass himself to his friends and family is to sneak out in the middle of the night, steal his parents’ money, and head to Cape Cod, where he knows Nancy is staying for the summer, not knowing she already has a boyfriend. Heading straight to the bar of a divey tourist restaurant, he gets wasted, harasses the bartender, gets punched in the face, has his money stolen, and wakes up on the hammock of the restaurant’s chef (Antonio Banderas), who takes pity on him and gives him a job washing dishes.
While the quiet, spiritual chef is initially an enigma, the rest of the staff is anything but. Staffed with comedian Stavros Halkias, basically playing himself, and taken under the wing of the coke-snorting Sal (Leo Woodall, The White Lotus), Tony’s restaurant education is more of the stuff of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Needless to say, this is a very funny and fun movie.
Matt Johnson is fresh off one of the most creative movies of the year, and while Tony is certainly more conventional, Johnson’s understanding of movie genres that helped make Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie a success also pays off here. He understands what beats of the coming-of-age movie are necessary to hit, while firmly avoiding cliches and frequently surprising expectations. There’s also quite a bit of heart here, backed by a terrific performance from Dominic Sessa. His Tony has to be both a cocky jerk and a vulnerable, lost young man, often in the same moment. Each time he concocts another lie, another scheme instead of owning up to his shortcomings, we still root for him, even when we want to punch him in the face. Sessa proves here that The Holdovers wasn’t a fluke and he could be one of the most exciting actors of his generation.
And while Tony inevitably takes us to a point where our protagonist is ready to start turning into “Anthony,” the movie works so well because it ultimately doesn’t matter that we’re watching the “origin story” of a famous person. Unlike a Michael-style biopic, Johnson’s story works without needing any previous knowledge about Anthony Bourdain. There’s no need for easter eggs or half-hearted attempts to recreate important moments like Bourdain eating with Obama, just a great story and character development. Whether you’re a Bourdain fan or know nothing about him, this is a journey with a troubled young man trying to find himself worth taking.
