Ben Affleck delivers the best performance of his film acting career in THE TENDER BAR thanks to director/actor George Clooney. Just like the film I reviewed in my previous post, LICORICE PIZZA, George Clooney's THE TENDER BAR, is a story set in 1973. Clooney's film takes place in Long Island, New York and Connecticut. Thank you, George Clooney for giving us what director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson did not in LICORICE PIZZA which also takes place in 1973 but in Southern California. LICORICE PIZZA has little racial diversity. I wrote in my previous blog that, although I found LICORICE PIZZA to be a sweet story of an unlikely romance between a high schooler who does some acting on the side and a 20-something savvy photographer's assistant who prefers to have him as a friend instead of boyfriend, I was bothered by the obvious lack of Black or Hispanic actors. And not just in lead or supporting roles in the film's large cast. The groups of extras -- background actors -- were also predominantly White. And I write that as someone who grew up in Southern California in the 1960s and 70s. Unlike the visual images you'll see in LICORICE PIZZA, you could find Black and Mexican Americans in the San Fernando Valley area of the 1970s. Whereas Paul Thomas Anderson's LICORICE PIZZA has brief performances by two Black actors -- Maya Rudolph as a casting director and there's a Black actress who plays a waterbed salesperson -- THE TENDER BAR has Black actors as bar patrons, attendees at a father and son school breakfast, the mother of a daughter who attends an Ivy League university, her Ivy League student daughter, a professor at the university, a cop and employees at The New York Times. Again, I give thanks to George Clooney for the racial diversity.
About THE TENDER BAR -- in it, we meet little J.R. He's a member of a messy, bickering, loud family that is rooted in love. J.R. is fatherless. His parents are divorced. His alcoholic, irresponsible dad is a rock radio DJ on a New York City station. J.R. is close to his mother. She's determined to see that he grows up to get the good luck in life that she didn't. J.R.'s father figure is his Uncle Charlie. He's a bartender at the local establishment called The Dicken Bar, named after Charles Dickens. Even though he didn't graduate from college, Uncle Charlie is a well-read, wise and warm working-class character who's very attentive to J.R. Charlie gives excellent advice to J.R. from his boyhood through to when he attends college and awkwardly begins to pursue his romantic and professional dreams.
It took me a few minutes to realize I was watching Ben Affleck. He nails the Long Island, New York accent and he's taken his voice down a register or two. I admit that I'm a Ben Affleck fan. He's done some high-profile flops. He also done some fine work in films that didn't get a lot of box office attention. Like 2006's HOLLYWOODLAND in which he played actor George Reeves, an actor who'd appeared in several Hollywood classic film but didn't really become a star until he played Superman in a 1950s TV series. And there was his performance in 2020's THE WAY BACK that had him playing the alcoholic basketball coach at the Catholic high school he once attended. The screenplay was a bit uneven but his performance wasn't.
Ben Affleck has never been better than he is in THE TENDER BAR. Broadway veteran Lily Rabe is wonderful J.R.'s unlucky, loving mother. The mother is determined that J.R. will attend either Harvard or Yale and become a lawyer. Lily Rabe should be considered for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Also wonderful is Daniel Ranieri as young, impressionable, smart and lovable little J.R. Here's a trailer for the film based on a memoir of the same name.
Tye Sheridan plays the college-aged J.R. Christopher Lloyd is a hoot as the flatulent grandfather. Briana Middleton is captivating and lovely as J.R.'s emotionally distant romance. THE TENDER BAR ia a tender, touching film. I loved it. Bravo, Ben Affleck.
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