This film, written by William Monahan and directed by George Clooney on autopilot is yet another shallow glimpse into the formative years of an wannabe writer. This is hardly virgin territory, having already been thoroughly covered by the likes of Unstrung Heroes, Almost Famous, and Neil Simon’s ‘Eugene Trilogy’, to mention but a few examples.
J.R. Maguire (Daniel Ranieri, Tye Sheridan), based on American novelist and journalist J. R. Moehringer, grows up in an eccentric family straight from Central Casting — we have the long-suffering single mother, the deadbeat dad, the curmudgeonly grandfather with a secret heart of gold, and the cool uncle who doubles as a father figure. The only thing, and it’s nothing to sneeze at, that The Tender Bar has going for it is that the grandfather and uncle are played by Christopher Lloyd Ben Affleck.
“When you’re 11, you want an Uncle Charlie,” says J.R. I can’t disagree, especially considering that Uncle Charlie owns The Dickens Bar, its shelves filled with booze and books. Now, this and no other is the movie they should have made: one wherein Ben Affleck is a self-taught philosopher barman who doles out drinks and folk wisdom in equal parts, and Christopher Lloyd is his best customer.
Unfortunately what we have here is such hackneyed material that Affleck’s and Lloyd’s combined efforts can hardly raise it above the commonplace (how’s this for a cliché: to illustrate the fickleness of J.R.’S stereotypically unattainable romantic interest, the soundtrack breaks into into Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”), whence it crumbles back whenever they’re off-screen.
It doesn’t help either that the potential shown by Sheridan in Mud and Joe apparently didn’t survive the actor’s puberty. In these two films Sheridan could boast of going toe-to-toe with Matthew McConaughey and Nic Cage; here Affleck acts circles around him.
Worst of all, we hear from a number of people how good a writer J.R. is, but we’re never given any concrete reason for that — only platitudes, such as invoking some ineffable je ne sais quoi or just unilaterally deciding that “You are a writer the moment you say you are.” What he fails to realize is that talking business and meaning business are two very different things.