There’s something weirdly off-putting about the music cues in "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," a documentary-cum-character study of an 85-year-old sushi “shokunin” or craftsman. Octogenarian Jiro Ono is the cheeriest of workaholics. He can’t imagine retiring, at least not until he’s either too ugly or too infirm to serve his patrons. Simply put, Ono loves his demanding job as the head chef at Sukiyabashi Jiro, his own 10-seat, Ginza-based sushi bar. Sukiyabashi Jiro is the smallest restaurant to be given a three-star rating by the Michelin Guide. To Ono, being passionate about your job is the only option. Which is ostensibly why director David Gelb presents Ono and his restaurant team’s meticulous process of food preparation with a mix of dreamy awe and fetishized attention to detail. This approach sounds fitting in theory. But in practice, it’s less than satisfying. Gelb films some prep scenes of fish being pared and then turned into sushi in slow motion while the film’s bombastic and melancholic score, composed largely of music by Phillip Glass and Max Richter, does most of the talking.

That music almost single-handedly destroys the emotional equilibrium of key scenes that establish the film’s main thesis, namely that work in Ono’s world is both a dream and discipline. While its director’s reverence and vision is apparent, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" often feels overdone thanks to Gelb’s unusual mix of tones. The meals at Jiro Ono’s restaurant start at $300 and only revolve around sushi. There are no other appetizers available and you must make a reservation about a month in advance to get a seat. Jiro’s eldest son, Yoshikazu, explains that, “We’re not trying to be exclusive or elite.” Instead, it’s a point of pride for the Onos to be completely thorough. That aura of single-minded focus determines much of Gelb’s vision of Ono as a master shokunin. For example, Yoshikazu makes a point of buying the restaurant’s fish from vendors at the Tsukiji Fish Market that only specialize in tuna or shrimp. And yet, a big part of what’s so refreshing about Jiro Ono is how modest and self-critical he is.

That endearing trait is also wisely highlighted early on in the film when a prominent Japanese food critic mentions how tirelessly Jiro works to improve his recipes and to keep Sukiyasbashi Jiro’s menu fresh. Jiro readily admits that being disciplined and experienced doesn’t always reap great results. Yoshikazu gives voice to his father’s theory about how ultimately you need to be talented to succeed when he says, “Studying hard doesn’t guarantee you’ll become a good person.” The fact that Yoshikazu is advocating this philosophy is striking since it had a direct impact on how both he and Takashi, his little brother, were raised by Jiro. Both children were, according to Jiro, only “allowed” to graduate high school. Then they started their ten-year apprenticeship with Jiro at his restaurant. Jiro is the first person to say that he was probably a negligent parent, joking about how a young Takashi, now an adult, would look at his father as a stranger in his own house.

But Jiro also actively encouraged Takashi to start his own sushi restaurant in Roppongi Hills. Yoshikazu tells us that, as Jiro’s older child, he will eventually inherit Sukiyabashi Jiro. So when Jiro encourages Takashi to branch out on his own, it’s his way of helping his youngest son to survive. sushi grade fish bakersfieldThere’s no excessive sentimentality to that decision; sushi grade ahi tuna costcoyou can tell that Jiro respects his son as a peer by the way he tells Gelb’s translator that he felt Takashi was a good enough chef to start his own restaurant.jiro dreams of sushi srt spanish Every decision that Jiro Ono makes in "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" seems to boil down to a matter of discipline first and then affection. sushi grade fish akron ohio

Which is what makes Welb’s approach to filming Jiro and his team at work so disconcerting. The use of numbers like Richter’s “Berlin by Overnight” or “Infra 5” suggest a pronounced melancholy and a hint of turbulence to Ono’s process that Gelb’s footage simply does not support. On the one hand, it’s easy to see why Richter and Glass’ minimalist aesthetic were chosen to score these scenes: as compositions, they’re both structured around the notion that the slightest inflection can change the nature of the seemingly routine.sushi las condes san damian Richter and Glass’ pieces are also sampled in order to reflect Ono’s conflation of his dream job with his hard-and-fast discipline. sushi maki menu burienBut the pensive mood of Richter and Glass’ pieces don’t always gel with Gelb’s footage.

By film’s end, Gelb hints that there might, in fact, be a reason to think that Ono’s artisanal style of cooking is endangered, namely the global over-consumption of fresh fish. But with two sons carrying on his legacy, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" should be a celebration of an artist’s accomplishments, not a premature burial. Maybe Gelb should have gotten Dan Deacon to score his film… Though the election subject matter made “The Bunker” an obvious candidate for the season premiere, a part of me wishes season two of Documentary Now! had started here, with “Juan Likes Rice And Chicken,” which more strikingly embodies Documentary Now!’“The Bunker” was undeniably good, but it almost seemed too easy and like Documentary Now! wasn’t quite digging deep enough. Though significantly more understated than the season premiere—especially in terms of the performances—“Juan Likes Rice And Chicken” is actually a funnier episode than “The Bunker,” finding humor in all the right places.

A parody of 2011’s spectacular Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, “Juan Likes Rice And Chicken” centers on Juan, a maestro of arroz con pollo, a simple dish with a very complicated process thanks to Juan’s obsessive desire for perfection. Juan serves from a limited menu—coffee, a banana sliced in half, rice with a dollop of butter, and chicken (sometimes)—in his remote three-star Michelin-rated restaurant where no detail goes overlooked. The original documentary, directed by David Gelb, follows a similarly rigid but passionate master of his craft: Jiro Ono, whose acute attention to detail earned his humble sushi restaurant in a Tokyo subway station the coveted three-star rating. There’s an over-the-top excessiveness to Jiro’s precision, to his compulsive determination to perfect, and Documentary Now! has a lot of fun exaggerating it all. “Juan Likes Rice And Chicken” jumps right into the humor, showing a pair of American tourists on their grueling 40-minute trek through the Colombian hills to get to Juan’s restaurant only to find out that there is no chicken being served that day.

Juan’s chicken selection process consists of giving himself five minutes to catch a chicken in a pen (if he’s unsuccessful, then fate has spoken and the chicken gets to live). Finding the highest quality ingredients includes a whole slew of seemingly meaningless rituals to which Juan has nonetheless assigned all the meaning in the world. He makes sure every banana feels and sounds right. Every coffee bean is individually examined: Is it your friend or your enemy? But just as Juan is unwaveringly precise in his measurements and ingredients, Documentary Now! remains unwaveringly precise in its comedy. There isn’t too much exaggeration or too little; Played as straight as possible, the jokes land effortlessly.It helps, of course, that Jiro Dreams Of Sushi lends itself perfectly to the Documentary Now! doesn’t try to force humor upon its original subject material. It doesn’t take an existing work and then merely “make it funny.” Instead, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and their writing team find and probe the humor and weirdness that’s already there.

All the parts of “Juan Likes Rice And Chicken” that seem the most outlandish are some of the parts most strongly rooted in reality. The doc reveals that Juan has increased the massage time for individual chicken breasts gradually from 30 minutes to an hour. In Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, Jiro decides that the octopus must be massaged for a full hour instead of merely 45 minutes. Just about every oddity in “Juan Likes Rice And Chicken” acts as a pretty clear analog to a detail from Jiro Dreams Of Sushi. doesn’t need to add weirdness so much as hold up a mirror to the weirdness that’s already there.Alexander Buono and Rhys Thomas mimic Jiro director Gelb’s indulgent, delicious camerawork that is hard to describe as anything other than “food porn.” (Gelb continued this style of food filmmaking in his Netflix series Chef’s Table.) They similarly use bold, cinematic camerawork to complement the bravado of the main subject, with a classical score that makes everything all the more lavish.

Those technical aspects make “Juan Likes Rice And Chicken” a visually and sonically immersive experience. The central characters all speak in Spanish with subtitles, adding to the episode’s authenticity. No detail goes overlooked.is always comprehensive when it comes to the particular mechanics of mimicking original works, but that technical precision isn’t what makes Documentary Now! the strange sensation it is. Anybody can ape a particular look and sound. gets to the heart of its subject matter, finds what makes the original documentary compelling on a character or story level and then plays with that. Jiro Dreams Of Sushi isn’t just about its mysterious and almost mythical main character; it’s about the complicated relationship between him and his two sons. Here’s where “Juan Likes Rice And Chicken” shines, too. Armisen plays Arturo, Juan’s son who has worked for a decade as an apprentice at the restaurant and who’s burdened with the looming task of having to someday take over the family business.

Then there’s Diego, the other son who Juan says is dead but in reality is only dead to him, because he left to start his own restaurant that’s in every way the opposite of his father’s. His restaurant—Diego’s Fun Restaurant—has no rules other than just having fun and a special house sauce that’s full of Captain Morgan. Arturo, meanwhile, lives by his father’s overbearing rules, having to bury coffee beans in the dirt and bang bags of rice against trees and listen to bananas and shoot chicken breasts from high-powered cannons. As strange as it sounds, the father-son dynamics at play in “Juan Likes Rice And Chicken” are grounded and compelling, taking the episode from mere parody to something more. Last week, Armisen and Hader were practically playing bit characters. This week, Armisen delivers a subtle but brilliant performance that resonates on an emotional level.certainly hasn’t shied away from casting big names—Tim Robinson, John Slattery, and Jack Black all appeared in season one—the general approach to casting seems to be less about Armisen and Hader getting all their funniest pals to be on the show (the route a lot of fringe comedies seem to go these days) and more about finding people who are going to look authentic within the world of the documentary and give natural