Critics have been giving their verdict on the upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic, Tony.
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Set to arrive in cinemas this August, the new A24 film is directed by Matt Johnson (Blackberry) and stars The Holdovers’ Dominic Sessa in the title role.
It’ll take a deep dive into the early years of the late food icon, and explore how he started out as an aspiring writer before discovering his love for cooking. This, he did by taking a job at a restaurant on Cape Cod over one summer when he was 19.
Starring alongside Sessa are Antonio Banderas – playing the chef at the restaurant who helped him find his true calling – as well as Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall, Dagmara Dominczyk, Rich Sommers and Stavros Halkias.
The beloved American chef and author died by suicide in 2018, aged 61.
Many critics hailed the movie with Variety writing: “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. ‘Tony’ clears that bar.”
The Hollywood Reporter also praised the movie adding: “A slender slice of a famous life, the movie feels a little wispy in its mix of scrappy and sweet, rough-edged and yet bathed in the balming glow of nostalgia. But it has an idiosyncratic charm that fits the title character.”
The Independent was equalling gushing. “As a film about what it means to embrace what’s in front of you and not what’s in your mind, it’s a lovely and deeply likeable work,” they wrote.
The Radio Times awarded it four stars and said: “It all adds up to a moving, charming, well-performed summer film told with an commendably light touch – a far cry better than a more traditional biographical film about Bourdain’s life and career might have been.”
Collider described it as “crass, it’s loud, it’s messy” and “yet, you end up with something profound, beautiful, and exciting on your plate”.
But despite the biopic getting 100 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes so far, others were more critical.
The Guardian‘s film critic Peter Bradshaw awarded the film three stars and said: “This is a strange film in some ways. It is watchable and entertaining, but its feelgood trajectory is compromised by what we know of the author.”
Empire magazine meanwhile, wrote: “A hangout movie is perhaps the most fitting way for Bourdain to be brought to the screen. Though its ambitions never quite match its subject, it depicts a summer you’ll be hard-pressed not to be charmed by.”
The Associated Press were equally critical in their review. “Director and co-writer Matt Johnson has frustratingly taken liberties with a formative period in Bourdain’s life, but still only manages to tell the story of how a callow lad became somewhat of a less callow lad after toiling in a restaurant kitchen on Cape Cod in 1975,” they wrote.
Tony is out in cinemas in the US on August 7 and the UK on August 14.
The post Critics give their verdict on Anthony Bourdain biopic ‘Tony’: “It’s a lovely and deeply likeable work” appeared first on NME.