Tender Bar review

Oh dear......................



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[size=28]The Tender Bar review – George Clooney’s pain-free coming-of-age tale is a gritless oyster




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[size=16]This adaptation of JR Moehringer’s memoirs, directed by Clooney, is strikingly empty of plausible emotion[/size]

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[size=11]Flavourless … Daniel Ranieri and Ben Affleck in The Tender Bar. Photograph: Claire Folger/Amazon[/size]


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[size=14]Peter Bradshaw
@PeterBradshaw1
Wed 15 Dec 2021 07.00 EST

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[size=14][size=34][size=118]George Clooney has long been a force for good in movies and public life – but what a bafflingly bland, indulgent, gritless oyster of a film he’s directed here. It is a boy’s own coming-of-age story without any believable growing pains, or pains of any sort, and is based on the bestselling memoir by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist JR Moehringer – which has had a whole lot of famous men asking him to ghostwrite their autobiographies, including our own Prince Harry.[/size]
The Tender Bar is about a kid growing up poor on Long Island with a mostly absent, abusive dad, a toughly determined mom, and getting a rough-and-ready literary education hanging out in the local bar run by his book-mad uncle, and finally getting a scholarship to Yale in the Class of 86. Ben Affleck plays the boozy bibliophile Uncle Charlie in whose pub, the Dickens, he nurses a literary spark in JR, played as a little boy by newcomer Daniel Ranieri and as a grownup by Tye Sheridan. Lily Rabe does a decent job as JR’s hardworking mom who has to bring her son back to her childhood home when her husband runs out on them; Christopher Lloyd is the cranky, ornery old grandpa in whose house all these deadbeats have ended up, and Max Martini is plausibly threatening as JR’s errant dad, a disc jockey called “The Voice” whose gravelly tones the boy yearningly listens out for on the radio.




Affleck and Martini provide the film’s single weirdest scene: Charlie grumpily demands the 30 bucks The Voice owes him, and The Voice gives him what appears to be a horrible beating, behind Charlie’s car in long-shot where the camera can’t or won’t see it. This is presented to us as just another sad tableau from JR’s tough upbringing, with no consequences. We don’t see Charlie covered in cuts and bandages. And we never hear JR, in one of his many soupy-sonorous voiceovers, talk about how shocking this must surely have been.
Another part of the film that is strangely without plausible emotional content is JR’s relationship with wealthy fellow student, Sidney (Briana Middleton), who has wild sex with him and finally breaks his heart by marrying someone else. There is a truly odd scene when JR insults Sidney’s mother over their breakfast table, presumably because of her snobbish attitude to JR’s mom. Is it supposed to be tense? Embarrassing? Funny? It just feels numb.

And on hearing that he’s planning on being a writer, people keep coyly telling JR that “memoirs” are where it’s at in publishing. Maybe; Moehringer didn’t get round to publishing his until 2005. This doesn’t feel like real memory at all: just a collection of flavourless picturesque scenes.

 The Tender Bar is released on 17 December in cinemas, and on 7 January on Amazon Prime Video.





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Wow! He really didn't like it. Let's hope other critics are more impressed. I'd hate for this to be another flop.

I don't give film critics much credence. I think it will do well. I can't wait.

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The pandemic may not be the only thing keeping people away from theatres. George may have a pr nightmare on his hands thanks to his leading man's big mouth.  ben is trying like hell to do damage control, but so far, no one is buying his excuses.

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[size=34]Ben Affleck: I would’ve ‘still’ been drinking if I’d stayed married to Jennifer Garner[/size]
Ben Affleck felt “trapped” in his marriage to Jennifer Garner — and thinks he wouldn’t have gotten sober had he stayed.
“We probably would’ve ended up at each other’s throats. I probably still would’ve been drinking,” Affleck, 49, recently said on SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show.”
“Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped.”
Affleck, who went to rehab for alcoholism in 2018, continued, “I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
The actor added that he and 49-year-old Garner, who were married from 2005 to 2018, tried to work on their marriage for the sake of their three children: Violet, 16, Seraphina, 12, and 9-year-old Samuel.
“Ultimately, we tried, we tried, we tried because we had kids, but both of us felt like we didn’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage,” he said.
He explained that the tabloids had it wrong about their breakup.
“Everything you read [in the news about the divorce] was bulls–t. The truth was we took our time, we made our decision … We grew apart,” he said. “We had a marriage that didn’t work. This happens. She’s somebody I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer.”
The “Argo” actor said his marriage to Garner ended on good terms.
“We did it amicably. We did our best. Did we have moments of tension? Did we have disagreements over custody? Was stuff difficult for us? Did we get angry? Yes, but fundamentally it was always underpinned with a respect,” he said, adding, “I knew she was a good mom. I always hoped she knew I was a good dad. I knew I was.”
Affleck also revealed that once he hit rock bottom, it took a year and a half to get sober.
“The cure for addiction is suffering, you suffer enough, that something inside you goes, ‘I’m done,'” he said of getting clean. “I’m lucky because I hit that point before I lost the things that were most important. Not my career or money — it was my relationship with my kids, and when I felt as if it impacted them, I recognized it.”
Affleck added, “It was the worst day of my life. I made amends … But since that day, I swear to Christ, I have not ever wanted to drink once.”
The “Gone Girl” star admitted the public dissolution of his marriage to Garner briefly gave him pause when it came to rekindling his aughts-era romance with Jennifer Lopez.

“It crossed my mind for sure … My responsibility to my children is the highest responsibility I have, so I’m not going to do anything that’s painful or destructive to them if I can help it,” he said. “That being said, I know that my life affects them.”
He added, “Me and their mom are celebrities and that’s hard. Let’s not bulls–t each other, right? That’s a f–king cross to bear, that’s an albatross already … and then during the divorce, you know they printed horrible lies.”
Affleck and Lopez, who were engaged in the early 2000s, started dating again in April


By Leah Bitsky
December 14, 2021 | 3:10pm

Yep.

A foot-in-mouth moment (or in this case many moments) about oneself when publicising a new film involving many other players always goes down well with everybody involved.....

Words like selfish or self-obsessed come to mind for some reason..

I don't know. He was on Howard Stern's show where it seems people often open up and say things they wouldn't reveal to anyone else. Howard seems to have a knack for making that happen. It seemed to me Ben was just telling it like it was from his point of view.

As far as being self-obsessed, he is an actor, after all. I think it's a requirement for the profession. Whether it bleeds over into selfishness I think depends on how much it's enabled by the people around you.

Since nobody is perfect (I know I'm not!), I'm willing to cut him a little slack.

Still hunting for good reviews- I know they're out there,,,,,


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[size=33]The Tender Bar[/size]


To quote Yogi Berra, “The Tender Bar” is “déjà vu all over again.” This is the same "young man's coming-of-age story" you’ve seen over and over. Nothing new has been added. The poster calls this “a feel good movie,” but who is supposed to feel good here? Certainly not the average viewer, who has seen this tired material so many times they can practically recite the dialogue. Could it be the characters, a “lovable” bunch of sad-sack losers who always get the benefit of the doubt no matter how little they deserve it? Perhaps it’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose book warranted this adaptation? Or maybe it’s George Clooney, who took a paycheck to direct a movie so flatly that his disinterest is evident in every frame.
We’re in the age of the uncle movie, and their influential characters run the gamut of stereotypes. We’ve had the cool, gay uncle in “Uncle Frank” and the big-hearted, sensitive uncle in “C’mon C’mon.” “The Tender Bar” has the straight-shooting, honest uncle whose true self gets poisoned by nostalgia. You know this one; he’s the tough guy who cusses in front of you when you’re a kid, promises to always tell you the truth, and gives you romantic advice that will prove useless. He can even get the everlasting gobstopper crap beaten out of him, and your hazy affection for his toughness won’t waver. You think back on him with fondness, as he was so much larger than life in your youth, and that affection buffs off the edges you unwillingly recall as an adult.




Mom (as she’s billed) wants JR to go to Yale. Nobody believes he can get in, least of all Grandpa (Christopher Lloyd). Grandpa wants Mom, JR, and Uncle Charlie out of his damn house. “You keep coming back!” he says when Mom complains about how horrible a father he was. These scenes play like a bad sitcom. I don’t know how faithful William Monahan’s script is to J.R. Moehringer’s memoir, but I hope the book has more substance and less cliché. I don’t have to tell you that JR will easily get into Yale with a full ride, will fall in love with a rich woman who uses his blue collar heart as a doormat, and will achieve his dream of being a writer despite the New York Times firing him because, just like this movie, most of his news stories are puff pieces about The Dickens Bar.

“Narration!!” reads the opening line of my notes for “The Tender Bar.” I underlined it three times out of frustration. Unless it’s a film noir or Morgan Freeman is on the soundtrack, narration far too often symbolizes lazy screenwriting. Granted, this is a memoir, but when JR is telling you things you’re already seeing or have just seen, it makes his voice on the soundtrack extraneous. Making matters worse, unlike Ranieri, whose eyes sparkle with wonder and admiration in every scene, Sheridan’s performance elicits no response from the viewer, even in the unnecessarily brutal final showdown with The Voice. I suppose that, given the familiarity of every aspect of the plot, the makers of this film were hoping you’d bring your own emotional baggage so you can do the heavy lifting instead of them.

At least Affleck is very, very good here, turning a thankless role into something more memorable than the material suggests. I wouldn’t want him as my uncle, but my love of dive bars made me want him to be my bartender. He has fun with his profane dialogue and has chemistry with the regulars, including Max Casella and Michael Braun. This is the kind of role that gets the Oscar nomination over the more deserving performance by the same actor in a different film, so don’t be surprised if Affleck gets one for this. It’ll be as predictable a development as every detail in “The Tender Bar.”



This kind of uncle is embodied here by Ben Affleck, whose presence made me incorrectly assume this movie took place in Boston. Uncle Ben, or rather, Uncle Charlie as Affleck’s character is christened, runs a bar on Long Island called The Dickens Bar. Unlike Joseph Cotten’s more famous namesake from “Shadow of a Doubt,” Uncle Charlie doesn’t murder people and terrorize his sister’s kid; the star rating would be higher if he did. Instead, he instructs his young nephew JR in the fine art of being a man. These lessons are necessary because, you guessed it, JR’s got daddy issues exacerbated by his missing Papa, a radio DJ nicknamed “The Voice” (Max Martini). JR listens to The Voice whenever he can, while he and his mother (Lily Rabe) wonder where he is. Considering radio stations have call letters and physical locations in 1973, it shouldn’t be too hard to find this deadbeat. Whenever anyone hears The Voice on the radio, they immediately knock over or destroy the radio. These folks have lots of radios to pummel.No matter. The Voice shows up every so often to predictably disappoint the young JR, who is played in an excellent debut by 

Daniel Ranieri, and to infuriate the older JR, who is played by Tye Sheridan with just as much disinterest as his director puts into shooting him. One of many running jokes that never works (but would inspire a great drinking game to pass your time) is the response whenever JR introduces himself. “What does the JR stand for?” they ask. There’s no answer. Another unsuccessful running joke is the reason why Uncle Charlie gets angry whenever The Voice shows up—apparently he owes Charlie 30 dollars. My mind drifted to the pissed off paperboy from “Better Off Dead,” who constantly screamed “I want my two dollars!!” whenever he saw John Cusack. At least he doesn’t get beaten up for demanding his dough. Uncle Charlie, on the other hand, is not so lucky.

PP-  I did a double take when I saw the name on the link you posted. I thought "Isn't Roger Ebert dead?" Then I clicked on the link and realised someone set up a website in his name. I don't know how many reviewers they host, but this one seems like a real grump. Somehow I feel that Roger Ebert would have had a different take on the film. This guy sounds like some of the movie cuts a little too close to home.

Ever since the passing of the site's co-founder and namesake, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert, in 2013, it has been run by his wife, Chaz Ebert.
[url=https://www.rogerebert.com/about#:~:text=Ever since the passing of,by his wife%2C Chaz Ebert.][/url]

About the site | Roger Ebert

[url=https://www.rogerebert.com/about#:~:text=Ever since the passing of,by his wife%2C Chaz Ebert.][/url]
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PP - Thanks for the info.

This reviewer seems to have it out for this film.  I think his review is way off base.

I just watched the movie on Amazon.  It’s a wonderful small film.  It’s a heartwarming coming-of-age story.  It’s not an action film in any sense of the word.  It’s low-key.  As a reviewer in The Washington Post described it “a story about words and feelings”,  “understated storytelling “.  BTW The Post gave it a very good review.  Seems the film critic understood that not all movies have to be jazzed up and fast paced.  He seems to understand the intent of Moehringer’s book and George’s direction.  I hope everyone here has a chance to see it.  I think George did a terrific job.  His direction of Ben Affleck is spot on.  Great music too!

I have to say after all the awful things that have been happening in our country I have been drawn to watching more heartwarming movies lately.  I just feel I need to see more humanity in people.  This movie put a smile on my face .

Donnamarie - I just finished watching the movie and I agree with you that this is the kind of movie that we need more of right now. It isn't exciting or action-packed, but it is soul-satisfying on so many levels. The casting is perfect (although I don't think Tye Sheridan looks anything like what Daniel Ranieri would grow into and at times I found that distracting). Everyone was so in character, and the set design and costume design were so perfect that everything felt totally real.

I haven't read the book, and I'd like to know if the relationship with Sidney is in there and, if it is, was she African American or just a rich girl from Connecticut. If anyone knows, please let me know.

Happy New Year guys from across the pond!

Yep. You're reflecting my opinion when I saw it in September in London. I had already read the book
 and thought it really was faithful to it. Of course you already know that Moehringer had won the Pulitzer Prize from the cover but his beginnings were all the more interesting because of that. It's a great read.

I rather suspect critics are so used to the wham bang slam of everything (and advertising where the screenshot changes every two seconds -if that! - is certainly shortening our concentration span), and the box office seem more important to them if only for the headline. 

Shame.

Ps ...and as charming as Tom Holland is, we'd all get very bored if it was all at Spiderman's pace!

I also have to wonder if a lot of critics are of an age where they were raised on franchises and superheroes and just don't know how to appreciate more nuanced films.

I think to some extent that’s true Lizzy.  This is an excellent movie for streaming.  It may get much better reception and appreciation on the small screen.  In the Washington DC area “The Tender Bar” played in only one theater.  Hardly a blip.

Just carved out the time to see it, and I'm so glad I finally did. Really, really enjoyed it. Excellent writing, though I am not a fan of voice over, and George struck the exact right touch with the direction. Very proud of him on this one.

I'm happy that people who make movies that don't have superheroes or aliens don't have to worry about opening weekend numbers or total box office anymore. Streamers are the only way we'll keep getting these.

Yay, George!

Way2 - I was hoping you'd chime in on this. I really wanted to know what you thought. He really did do good this time, didn't he? Too bad publicity dropped off after the initial release. A lot of people are going to miss this one unless word of mouth kicks in.

Yeah, that's the movie world we live in now. The good thing is that streamers eliminate the dependence on theater box office for a film's popularity and longevity, but the bad thing is that it may take a while for an audience to find it, given all the choices. And this is an Amazon film, so it's not going to ever be anywhere except Amazon, and the platform is just not as competent at marketing as the other streamers.

But I think it will get recognized. Look at 'Nomadland,' which had basically the same release strategy and which hardly anybody saw (and wasn't anywhere as good as its reviews, or as good as 'Tender Bar,' IMO). These movies used to be critically acclaimed box office bombs that disappeared in two weeks - or not get made at all. Now they set up digital shop and do a slow and steady business until whenever. And in the process, generate some interest in other work by the artists, which is probably readily available. 

So I think the drop-off in publicity isn't a real killer.

Way2Old - I don't think the lack of publicity will totally ruin its chances, but I think it deserves a bigger audience than it will get. It's a shame because I think this is one of George's best.

Something you said about the streamers made me think that there's a similarity between them and the old Hollywood studio system of the 30s and 40s when tons of movies were made because the studios needed product to fill the theaters they owned/contracted with. Now the streamers are making product because they own the platforms and need new content to attract viewers. I wonder if the quality of today's movies will rise to the level of Hollywood's "golden age".