‘Tony’ review: Late Anthony Bourdain is turned into a coming-of-age movie hero

If a viewer doesn’t know Bourdain from Pepin, “Tony” would play as a highly entertaining, heart-tugging and fictional boy-to-man vacation flick, like “The Way Way Back.”

To do justice to such a beloved figure may seem impossible, but one young actor—and one filmmaker on a hot streak—just rose to the challenge.

The beauty of "Tony" is that it doesn’t make anything feel predetermined. It’s the story of an old-school American summer — those months when a college kid like Tony, doing a job because he needs a job, has the drifting freedom to fall into random experiences, because that’s the enchantment of being in a Cape Cod beach

Dominic Sessa stars as a conceited yet vulnerable young chef alongside Antonio Banderas – but the feelgood factor is compromised by what we know of the author For all the drugs and punch-ups, this is an unexpectedly sentimental coming-of-age story – or maybe origin myth – about the formative youthful kitchen experience

Also starring Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones and Leo Woodall, Matt Johnson’s bio-drama chronicles a formative Provincetown summer during which the future chef worked in a hectic kitchen.

Seacia Pavao Anthony Bourdain, the acclaimed chef, writer, and TV documentarian who died in 2018 at the height of his stardom, was a man who loved adventure tales and wound up turning his life into one. Tony is its amusing first chapter. An origin story about a smugly smart and reckless young man who discovers his cal