‘Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent’ Review: Gourmet Doc Serves Delicious Dish

Despite losing its way in the final courses, this film examines the unsung hero who helped invent the celebrity chef

Imagine a culinary world without open kitchens, locally-sourced menus, and Rachael Ray’s mug splayed across a collection of groceries and cookware at Target.

The innovator himself describes his enamorment with food and first-class living as having been born out of a lonely childhood in which his well-heeled parents often left him alone in hotels and on cruise ships while they socialized.

Tower’s father was a womanizer and his mother an alcoholic, though she still threw parties at which she’d get drunk before the snacks had been served.

Food as emotional salve is a recurring theme throughout “The Last Magnificent,” the feature debut of TV producer and occasional director Lydia Tenaglia.

Styled pretentiously at times, the film presents Tower as the lone wolf he was at heart; shooting him as chef-as-martyr, roaming the Mexican desert and gazing toward the sun as his own narration plays, however, is a bit eyeroll-inducing.

Quickly rising at the already-famous restaurant, he essentially became Waters’s partner (both in business and personally, although Tower’s gay), creating the menus and introducing the then-novel practice of touting food grown in the region.

When Waters took credit for his work in a cookbook she published and also became unhappy with the high-class crowds he attracted — in archival footage, she says, “You ask people for help, and they [give] you too much help” — Tower took his leave.