Tony

During the press tour for the theatrical release of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie earlier this year, writer/director/star Matt Johnson explained that he felt like this was his last chance to return to the web series that made him. His previous film, BlackBerry, brought him attention from a much broader audience (myself included) and the best reception of his career, including nearly sweeping the 12th Canadian Screen Awards. With Johnson on the precipice of more prestigious work, that revisitation became a swansong for his collaboration with much of the creative team he'd carried with him since his very first feature.

More crucially, not only does Tony mark Johnson's first in which he doesn't also act, it's the first to eschew his signature, pseudo-BTS style. Even in BlackBerry, although the characters never acknowledged the camera, his cinematographer (and long-time collaborator) Jared Raab wisely wielded it as a character, imbuing scenes with the manic energy of someone witnessing conversations to which they should not have access. But Tony is a more traditional biopic, albeit wisely constrained to the summer of 1975, when the subject is still a punk-ass wannabe writer, so it wouldn't make much sense for a camera to follow around this nobody from Jersey. While we all know who he'll grow up to be (which the movie attempts to capture by withholding his full name until the final line), "Anthony Bourdain" couldn't possibly mean anything to the residents of Provincetown, MA in the 70s.

By the end of the summer, they're at least familiar with his face, given his grand attempt to bring together the community out of a mixture of guilt and opportunistic selfishness. The emotional journey there is not the most straightforward, as Tony's attempts at character growth are haphazard. It's no great secret that somewhere along the way, Tony's focus shifts from writing to cooking, as the man spent decades working in and helming kitchens, followed by another few decades hosting cooking-related television shows such as Parts Unknown. Although desperation lands him a dish-washing gig in the dingy fried seafood shack the Flagship, telegraphing the transformation in interests that is to come, the key moments are quite opaque. With the exception of his climactic act, his focus is simply anything that could make an impression on Nancy (Emilia Jones), a college classmate he's stalked to the Cape, because whiffing on a writing fellowship means he's got nothing better to do.

Johnson has no interest in either glossy hagiography or grand myth-making, but struggles to figure out what goes in their place. The result is a collection of vignettes that are enjoyable enough in their construction of a teenage summer spent around people who have a lot to teach you, but hinders their ability to convey all that much meaning. Even the small allusions to the broader topics the real Bourdain would discuss in his later years are handled rather unceremoniously. A bump of cocaine powers him through a day in which he fell asleep standing up, only to never be mentioned or depicted thereafter. Watching the Flagship's sous chef Sal (Leo Woodall) shoot up on a dock is such a momentary, inconsequential aside that I almost forgot about it. The raucous, confrontational, nasty atmosphere in the kitchen is fairly mild (albeit occasionally homophobic) instances of townies busting each other's balls, save for the haymaker Sal lands in a fight with Chef (Antonion Banderas). Maybe most fascinating is that although Chef is exacting, and the pressure is high during the dinner rush, he mostly runs his kitchen with a firm but measured hand, running directly counter to the abusive behavior Bourdain would later witness and write about from his time in Manhattan.

So what, then, is the story? It's driven by the changing relationship between Tony and Nancy as he lies his way into spending time with her, much as he downplayed how creepy it is that he followed her on vacation. However, more time is spent on his developing but distant relationship to Chef, on whose cot he's sleeping after being robbed blind his first night in town. And there's plenty of going out on the town with the rough and tumble Sal, a brutish local with a thick accent who'd be quite comfortable on the streets of Southie, made all the more visceral by Woodall stealing every single scene he's in. All of which to say it's more about concerned with minor exploits than a plot. Fortunately, everyone is a solid hang, so it works well enough to bring you along, even if the impression it leaves is a bit airy, in direct contrast to the weighty yet playful tone communicated by the staging and Jay McCarrol's score.

As someone intensely skeptical of Dominic Sessa's abilities, and despite warming up to him slightly on a rewatch, I only began to relax a few scenes in. It certainly helps that he's visibly older, but the biggest improvement is the emotional control he exhibits. That said, you could still feel the effort in every over enunciated word and long pause accompanied by a hard stare, leading to quite a few stilted scenes. Banderas felt more natural but still clunky, inviting questions of how much stems from Johnson's lack of experience directing such a mannered screenplay. It made the easy rapport of Woodall and Stavros Helkias (another kitchen hand) stand out that much more, as they more seamlessly inhabited their characters.

Johnson never escapes the impression that he was an odd choice to make this movie. There's not much of a distinctive style to the film (although cinematographer Michael Bauman finds a handful of lovely compositions), nor a throughline that lands as all that unique. The choice to focus on a narrow slice of Bourdain's experience is a good one, but there's not a whole lot that Johnson does with it. The humor is good (you'll never tire of the way Chef wakes Tony up each morning), but fails to sniff the highs of his previous work. It does not impress upon you the stature of the man himself, but it at least gives you a sense of the direction in which he's heading, and in an enjoyable package nonetheless.

All of which to say is that it's good enough.