The script by William Monahan (who adapted The Departed<\/em>) is based on the memoir by J.R. Moehringer. The coming-of-age story, set on Long Island, begins in 1973, as J.R. (played at this age by Daniel Ranieri, and by Tye Sheridan is a young man) and his mother (Lily Rabe) return to the ramshackle family home where she was raised. Grandpa (Christopher Lloyd) isn\u2019t exactly a cheerful presence, but it\u2019s the kind of family where the adult children are in a constant state of regrouping, emotionally and financially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Uncle Charlie doesn\u2019t ever seem to leave at all. Played by Ben Affleck, who sports a spectacular pair of sideburns and his reliably knowing smirk, Charlie is a charmer, a good-time guy who tends bar at neighborhood watering hole (and yes, I\u2019m afraid the title is an inversion of \u201cbartender\u201d); his vocation and demeanor hide his intellectual prowess and curiosity. He\u2019s full of literary references and little bits of wisdom, and since J.R.\u2019s father is a piece of shit radio disc jockey who abandoned his family before the kid was even born, Uncle Charlie takes it upon himself to teach J.R. \u201cthe male sciences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We spend a fair amount of time in this \u201870s frame before jumping ahead, roughly a decade, to J.R.\u2019s entry into adulthood \u2013 specifically to Yale, which is a thrill to his mother, who\u2019s dreamed endlessly of her boy heading off to an Ivy League school. Sheridan is good in this section (better than he\u2019s been in a while), bundling up the kid\u2019s tics and insecurities, and his chemistry with charming Brianna Middleton is so good that the movie falls right in with them, right away. But the relationship is over so quickly, and subsequently handled so clumsily, that it hardly seems worth the trouble; something turns her away from him early on, and the film never bothers to explain what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s frankly strange to choose ambiguity on that point, and absolutely nowhere else<\/em>. George Clooney distrusts his audience in a way that only someone who watched Out of Sight<\/em> tank could, so his direction is competent (inspired in spots, even), but his recent films are infected by a sense that he\u2019s worried we\u2019re not getting the point, and he must<\/em> make sure that we do. Around the midpoint, there\u2019s a scene involving the opening and reading of the Yale admissions later that Affleck plays to perfection \u2013 direct and moving, but not overdoing it. And then Clooney slathers the scene in goopy, twinkly score, and ruins it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The running narration, needless to say, causes even more trouble. Ron Livingston pipes into scene after scene, reading what sounds like an audiobook of the memoir, which is the only explanation for its hammer-to-the-head quality; describing Grandpa\u2019s house as \u201ca full compliment of laughter and tears\u201d is on the nose even by the standards of expositional narration. Later, Uncle Charlie goes to a meeting with J.R.\u2019s school psychologist and ends up shredding the guy, which makes for a good scene \u2013 until the next one, when the narrator informs us, \u201cUncle Charlie didn\u2019t go to college. He was self-taught. But that didn\u2019t mean some dime-store shrink could go toe to toe.\u201d Yes, we just saw the scene. We understood it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The easy-listening \u201870s pop needle occasionally fall into the same realm, but cause less damage; the vibe of those records is so specific that they\u2019re kinda necessary, and they get the job done. (There\u2019s a lot conveyed by \u201cDancin\u2019 in the Moonlight\u201d that you just don\u2019t get in any other song). And Monahan\u2019s script has some little gems in it, occasional moments of knowing dialogue \u2013 there are multitude contained in a line like \u201cI\u2019m lettin\u2019 myself have a cocktail from time to time\u201d \u2013 and thankfully, when we get to J.R.\u2019s inevitable, wildly uncomfortable reunion with his deadbeat dad, Clooney lets us sit in the thick, terrible silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the deeper it goes, the less Affleck we get, and that\u2019s to the movie\u2019s detriment. His scenes are the best in the movie; the chummy vibe of that bar is palpable, and those scenes put across an established cast of characters, and a sense of their relationships, shorthand, and slang. He forms a credible relationship with J.R. (both of them), and the grace notes he hits and holds in their last scene together are a wonder to behold \u2013 so good, in fact, that the film ends feeling stronger than it is. The Tender Bar<\/em> is a nice, warm movie \u2013 flawed, sure, but hard to dislike with any particular vigor. “The Tender Bar” is currently in theaters; it streams Friday on Amazon Prime.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/tender-bar2-scaled-1024x683.jpg\")
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