Tracing the summer the 19-year-old Bourdain spent working in a kitchen in Provincetown, the movie has an enchanted spirit of discovery that recalls "Adventureland" and the films of Richard Linklater.
Plus IconOwen Gleiberman
Chief Film Critic
@OwenGleiberman See All
Courtesy of A24 Watching a biopic, or reviewing one, I can’t say that I’ve ever spent much time wondering what the subject of the movie might think of it. Would James Brown have liked “Get On Up,” the superb 2014 drama about him? He would probably have found something in it to gripe about. Elton John lovingly endorsed “Rocketman,” the 2019 film about him that I thought was a laughably inauthentic piece of junk.
But as I watched “Tony,” Matt Johnson’s drama about the young Anthony Bourdain and the summer he spent in Provincetown working in a restaurant kitchen for the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder what Bourdain himself would have made of the movie. How could you not wonder? He was too opinionated, too no bullshit, too much of a movie fanatic, too much the kind of guy who would greet a film about him not by feeling flattered but by pissing all over it because it had missed the real story. To me, if an Anthony Bourdain biopic can’t clear the bar called “Bourdain would have liked it,” it’s probably not a good movie.
Related Stories
![MCU Surprise: ‘VisionQuest’ Finale Teases the Return of [SPOILER] in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’](https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/vision.jpg)
