Clooney Fails to Connect With ‘The Tender Bar’ (Review)
With his eighth feature film as a director, George Clooney has taken on J.R. Moehringer's acclaimed memoir of the same name.
Unfortunately, as with his last several films in the director's chair, 'The Tender Bar' is inherently quite watchable, but failed to connect with me on almost any genuine level.
For the film, J.R. is played by talented newcomer Daniel Ranieri as a young boy raised by his single mother (Lily Rabe) who really never gets to know his father, a disc jockey who exists in his life almost exclusively as a voice on the radio dial. They end up moving in with his grandparents (Sondra James, who gets almost no dialogue, and Christopher Lloyd, who does little else except for grunt and fart) on Long Island. J.R. falls under the spell of his uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck), a ...