Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain is not the documentary you thought it might be. It is not a fluff piece of praise about arguably the most famous celebrity chef of this century, nor does it claim to explain why he committed suicide at age 61. What it does do is thrill with his charisma, a personal magnetism that makes this tall, handsome man taller than anyone else in the room.

From the moment his Kitchen Confidential hit the streets and became an instant New York Times best seller, the food world had an apologist for its greatness and a foodie realist who trumpeted the greatness of eating around the world. Not even tales of his heroin addiction could dissuade food lovers from making him the emblem of in-your-face food fashion. Home videos of him at times such as when he berates a fishmonger in front of Bourdain's Park Ave steak house, Les Halles, are endearing.

As the doc depicts him, he is almost more interested in how a nation's cuisine mirrors its culture than the actual nature of the food itself. If fish is the Japanese signature food, then how it is presented is more important than the fish. He is roguish and bad-ass, not Batali or Emeril.

The doc is itself more interested in spying on Bourdain or tracking him walking and talking than it is in how he helps his or someone else's restaurant attain star ratings. Director Morgan Neville has found the most charming footage, much of it outtakes from the hundreds of hours of him at play and occasionally at work on his celebrated cable shows. The kerfuffle about their using a bot for some of his narration is interesting but does not compromise the overall Bourdain depiction.

The most fascinating "at play" is his intriguing love affairs with his second wife, Ottavia, and Italian actress Asia Argento, who eventually leaves him for another man and us to wonder if that split is the cause of his final act (he hung himself in a hotel room in 2018). Lamentably this great writer left no note to help us understand that inscrutable act.

To its credit, the documentary makes no claims to know why but neatly allows voice overs to make insightful, if not superficial, conclusions that this peripatetic celebrity could not find his place in even the most exotic places on earth. Ironically, Bourdain claimed to be an open book about his talent and his demons, but really never allowed the latter to reveal themselves or explain his exit.

My own inference from the tantalizing details of this outstanding documentary is that, like Hemingway, Plath, and Robin Williams, to name only three famous suicides, his talent and his charm overwhelmed even him, to the extent that they were crushing the real Tony out of existence. He never knew himself well enough to be able to save himself.

Who knows? The doc does well, anyway, showing the daily thrills of Bourdain, how much he loved people more than food, and how restless his soaring talent was. In the end, he may have been too gifted to be able to live with himself. And that's what I thought about Hemingway as well. Great gifts require great care lest they destroy.

Roadrunner: The Life of Anthony Bourdain is a fascinating study of a celebrated chef who was far more interesting than the food he celebrated.

Sensitive subject! Anthony Bourdain travelled to many many exotic and toxic places, He had to be prescribed an anti malaria drug. It is a fact that one of them is a killer - Mefloquine . If you have any trauma PTSD, addictions, altered brain chemistry etc...it can and will mess with your head.

My wife and I loved the movie and Anthony, we just wonder did they miss something .....

This is a brilliant documentary on the adult life and success of Anthony Bourdain, warts and all. I found myself mesmerized by his charismatic charm and his authentic, complicated nature as a "mediocre cook" to a global book and television sensation. The film has great historical footage which showcase this wild ride. The film also is filled with interviews of people that knew and worked with Tony. These folks clearly loved and admired him, but were very forthcoming about the challenges of working with Tony. The film is good film making. Not too long. It is well structured and well made-unlike many modern, so called, documentaries. The look at Bourdain in the light of Conrad and Colonel Kurtz is brilliant. The film starts out, in Tony's own words, telling you the story will not have a happy ending. The story night not have a happy ending, but the ride is joyous.

This doc is well put together and very beautiful at times. It uses bits of audio book narration, clips from various Bourdain shows, previous press pieces, home movies, friend and family interviews and more - to tell the tale of someone that has fascinated many, myself included.

I picked up the audio book of Kitchen Confidential nearly a decade after it came out. I was a young mom who needed the escapism of a story in my ear to survive my dead end job. Tony gave me all of that and more. I listened to that book and Medium Raw, when it came out, over and over. I rocked babies at night to them, I typed hours of data into spreadsheets to them, I knew which chapters to listen to when I had had a bad day or needed to get motivated for a long day ahead. My commute was full of Bourdain and his voice became a comfort blanket. I watched the brief narrative TV show so many times I am frankly surprised some network didn't consider it for a reboot. I turn on one of his travel shows and fall asleep to it when I now travel for work. And I don't think I'm alone in that. I think Tony meant a lot to a lot of people for a lot of reasons.

This film can feel voyeuristic and terrible if you are just mildly curious about Bourdain. This might not have been made for you. Who it was made for is people who needed a safe place to mourn with someone who also cared for a person. If you feel like an idiot mourning a person you never really knew - join the club. But I think the beauty of Tony is that he let us know him in some way that made us also feel known. I needed to mourn the loss of my friend and maybe you do too.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a personal, honest-albeit loving-look at and into the life of Anthony Bourdain and all the various detours it took. This documentary charts his journey from chef to writer to acclaimed TV host, as told by his closest friends, the people he worked with, and his family.

After an opening credits sequence that runs through the years leading up to Bourdain's career as a chef, Roadrunner begins its sprint in 1999 after he's secured a deal to write a book about his experiences in the restaurant world, Kitchen Confidential, the New York Times bestseller that would put Bourdain on the talk show circuit, and kickstart his ascent towards celebrity. In preparation for writing his second memoir, A Chef's Tour, he was approached by TV producers who pitched an ongoing series in tandem with the upcoming book, thus forming a partnership that would spawn multiple shows, win several Emmys and begin Bourdain's long tenure on television screens and secure his status as a world-famous traveler.

This film is a challenge on many levels. For starters, Bourdain's suicide is still a recent event in the public eye, and, I'm certain, a fresh wound for those who knew him. It's difficult to watch a feature-length story of someone's whole life, knowing that it's going to end so inevitably, suddenly, and sadly; however, Roadrunner succeeds by showing us Bourdain in his totality which balances the sadness of his inevitable end. And yet, audiences may find it unavoidable to wonder who he really was, along with his loved ones striving to answer the question: Who was Anthony Bourdain off-screen?

Roadrunner mirrors Bourdain's own frequent departures from home and journeys to parts unknown, taking us back and forth from his television world and his home life with his daughter. We see a conversation between Bourdain and a friend, where they discuss the paradox of wanting to return home when they're away, but immediately wanting to get back on the road when they get home. This tragic conversation gets right to the heart of the movie's title, Roadrunner, and just how reflective it was of Bourdain's own everyday life.

After a TV episode goes awry, Bourdain talks about his faltering belief in the power of the table at which we eat and share, yet Roadrunner becomes a testament to that power. Nearly every interview in the film is organized across a table, where deeply personal details and anecdotes from those who knew Bourdain are exchanged. Director Neville operates with a wealth of outtakes from his TV shows and all the excess footage of Bourdain's 20 years on screen, but it's these genuine moments with Bourdain's tribe that cut the deepest.

I give Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it for ages 15 to 18, plus adults, for mild language and strong themes throughout. Roadrunner lands in theaters on July 16, 2021. Reviewed by Benjamin P., KIDS FIRST!