‘Tender Bar’ has its moments but drifts away
“The Tender Bar” is a lovely movie — so long as it stays within a half-mile radius of the bar. When it drifts from the bar, it collapses. When it goes back to the bar, it lifts a little. But it stays away too often to be called a success.
Based on the memoir by J.R. Moehringer, it’s the story of a little boy who has drawn a rather weird hand when it comes to male role models. His father is a violent drunk who abandons the boy and his mother. But the boy benefits from daily contact with his bartender uncle, Charlie (Ben Affleck), and the guys who hang out at the local watering hole. These are good guys, and they give him instruction in how to be a man.
Just philosophically, the movie is welcome at a time when the term “toxic masculinity” has become so pervasive that it’s created the idea that masculinity is, in itself, inherently toxic. To be sure, there’s a bad guy in “Tender Bar,” but the movie is very positive about the good things that boys get from kindly male role models.
One of the nicest aspects of “Tender Bar” — and the best thing about George Clooney’s direction of it — is that with all the attention the boy gets from his harried but affectionate mother (Lily Rabe), his gruff grandfather (Christopher Lloyd) and his uncle, plus all the guys in the uncle’s circle, it becomes clear that little J.R. (Daniel Ranieri) feels loved. These scenes could have been sentimental, but they’re not. They’re authentic to the experience of being a little kid in Long Island growing up in the 1970s.
The movie reminded me of something that I probably hadn’t thought of or experienced since I was 11 or 12 as a kid growing up in Long Island. When you’re a boy, grown men love to impart life lessons — at least they did back in the day. What’s funny is that even at 10 years old, you can know that half of what they’re saying is nonsense and yet still feel flattered
to be the focus of attention.
In “The Tender Bar,” Uncle Charlie is the main source of wisdom, and some of what he says makes sense. For example, he says that if a man orders a “well scotch” (that is, the cheap house scotch), he’s about to hit bottom. This is true. Well scotches are not to be drunk; they’re for taking the paint off a car. Likewise, years later, when J.R. is about to go off to Yale University, he tells him to take philosophy — “because there are no right answers.”
“The Tender Bar” falls apart once the grown J.R. (Tye Sheridan) goes off to school. The movie switches gears and becomes the story of J.R.’S infatuation with a rich girl (Briana Middleton), and it’s a dull story, inhibited by its being based on fact. We see them together for a time, but it means a lot more to him than it does to the audience. In a movie romance, the one person that must be seduced is the viewer, and that
just doesn’t happen here. There’s nothing special in that relationship to make us share J.R.’S dream.
It becomes surprising that J.R.’S longing for this young woman should take up so much of the movie’s second half. Imagine a medical drama about someone with a common cold. What J.R. is going through is as common as that and even less interesting.
Just stop watching the minute J.R.’S voice changes, and you won’t miss the best parts of “The Tender Bar.”
Running time: 1 hours 46 minutes.
Rating: R (language throughout, some sexual content).