Men fill a void in sweet film ‘The Tender Bar’
If you’re ever thirsty on Long Island, look for a dive bar called The Dickens. It’s a nice place, from all accounts. There are books everywhere, a group of sweet, lovable locals and a bartender who is a good soul with a tough exterior. The barflies somehow know when the Magna Carta was signed — 1215, silly! — and will line up to buy you a round of gin martinis if you get into Yale.
Not sounding typical? Welcome to “The Tender Bar,” a coming-of-age film based on a real life that doesn’t feel entirely real. It’s a George Clooney-directed, Ben Affleckstarring celebration of men set in the ‘70s and ‘80s that uses a charmed life to say remarkably little.
“The Tender Bar” is the story of JR — first starring Daniel Ranieri as an 11-yearold and then Tye Sheridan as a young man — whose father left him and his mom when he was a kid and yet still haunts his son as a distant voice — he’s a DJ on the radio. A school psychologist theorizes that
JR, whose very name, Junior, is derivative of a missing parent, has no identity.
But a community of men — his uncle Charlie (Affleck), his crabby grandfather (Christopher Lloyd), his Yale friends and even a priest on a commuter rail — fill the void. They give JR advice, steer him and go to functions with him. The message is: Guys got this. If films could smell, this one would reek of cologne, cigars and leather.
JR’s mom — a wonderful Lily Rabe — is not much help, with only one real wish: that her son go to Yale and be a lawyer. It largely falls on uncle Charlie to teach JR the so-called “Manly Sciences” — take care of your mother, get a car, don’t hit women, save some cash in your wallet for emergencies and learn to change a tire, among them.
Affleck is getting award-season buzz but this role is tailor-made for him, equal parts roguishly cool, unflashy literary and bluntly honest. His Charlie is like that gruff but sweet guy from “Good Will Hunting” all grown up and running a bar, having traded blue-collar Boston for blue-collar Long Island.
The screenplay by William Monahan is based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by J.R. Moehringer. It’s got some great lines — “If you suck at writing, that’s when you become a journalist,” among them — but there is a meandering quality to the film, a lack of sharpness.
“The Tender Bar,” a Amazon Studios release, is rated R for “language throughout and some sexual content.” Running time: 105 minutes.