The film The Tender Bar has, in theory, all the elements required for a successful film. At the base, there are these memoirs of JR Moehringer, journalist and award-winning Pulitzer author. On the menu: eccentric family, missing father, discovery of love, in short, something to do. In the realization, there is George Clooney, capable of beautiful things. Finally, in the interpretation, there are notably Tye Sheridan and Ben Affleck, of whom the same can be said. In practice, alas, The Tender Bar, a novelty Prime Video, turns out to be bordering on tasteless.
The title refers to the establishment on Long Island, in New York State, which somewhat becomes the second home of young JR Moehringer: the Dickens, a neighborhood bar with walls lined with books run by his uncle Charlie. Charlie whom JR, who rarely sees his father, made his true father figure. The situation lends itself to this, the financial precariousness of Dorothy, JR’s mother, having forced a return to the grandparents’ house where Charlie still resides.
In said household, we meet the familiar and beloved faces of Christopher Lloyd, Back to the Future (Back to the future), in the role of the grandfather, and of Lily Rabe, ofAmerican Horror Story, in that of the mother… These are however Tye Sheridan, seen in Ready Player One (Player One) and The Card Counter(Facing the enemy), and Ben Affleck, who goes without introduction, who are the stars, although the latter’s presence is less important than you might expect.
Memories oblige, we are in the memory. However, Clooney opts for an uninspired literality. So we come back to the past, declined from the beginning of the 1970s to the mid-1980s, in favor of the present, camped at the very end of the 1980s. journalist and writer JR remembers such and such an event. Of varying interest, these reminiscences constitute the disjointed plot of the film.
A disembodied vision
The film also suffers from a historical reconstitution where one feels the dawning of artificiality, with wigs which betray their presence here and there and clothes which sometimes look like costumes.
The most problematic aspect, however, is Clooney’s inability to breathe any life into the patchwork of episodes entrusted to him. All of this remains sadly disembodied.
This finding is all the more frustrating as this multigenerational house with little money but valuing education, this bar populated by friendly regulars as well as Yale University where JR will be admitted offered backdrops conducive to rich paintings of backgrounds. Through ignorance, disinterest or lack of vision, Clooney derives nothing significant from it, confining himself to scratching the surface of places and people – for a counterexample sharing many themes, figures and places, we can revisit the marvelous. Nobody’s Fool (A man almost perfect), by Robert Benton.
Superficiality also prevails in developments, from the relationship between JR and Charlie, which ultimately never rises above the cliché, to the redundant romance plot. The actual production takes on an almost random dimension, an impression reinforced by an assembly with often inharmonious cuts. In short, whatever their qualities, these memories will have resulted in a very unmemorable film.