The Tender Bar
AmazonWith a track record this shoddy, George Clooney directs features on a basis of fear. He will one day find a concept or story that is fitting for his direction. The Tender Bar, a Ben Affleck-starring drama that shows he and Tye Sheridan can relay demented and empty lines at one another, is another fascinatingly dull feature from Clooney behind the camera. For a man working in the business so frequently, it is surprising he cannot get to grips with what makes an audience tick and how the performances are so entwined in that. With a quick turnaround after the torturous Netflix original, The Midnight Sky, it is maddening to see just how mediocre The Tender Bar is.
Opening with a generic rock track and a dusty car is the most Clooney choice to make. It screams of uninspired, unmoving direction. Based on the memoir of the same name, it is hard to feel for or find comfort in the characters at the heart of this one. Narration that introduces the setting and hard times to come are awfully twisted and uncharismatic. They are inevitable and cliché: the “home is where the heart is” cannot survive the soppy and unhealthy dynamic of returning to home being seen as a sign of failure. The Tender Bar’s whole aim is to move away from that but if anything, it cements it with characters who are realising they aren’t much more than the glum states they wished they’d avoided. Affleck particularly, with his role as Charlie Moehringer. Much of the narration tries to flesh his character out, but it falls on deaf ears.
Much of The Tender Bar will fall on deaf ears, not because it has nothing to say but how it says it. Messages of flying the family nest but always being reliant on those that raised you, it is a strong and pertinent message for those that need to hear it. But there are far better films to echo those notes. Clooney can do nothing but follow in repetitive footsteps. He offers little in the way of innovation. At least Suburbicon had a soul to it. There was some semblance of iconography that settled into that post-atomic-age America. The Tender Bar is just Hillbilly Elegy with a different coat of paint and one less Glenn Close. Their replacement is Christopher Lloyd, who provides ample material as ever, deep in the throes of his twilight years.
But that is no trade-off for quality. Watching The Tender Bar is a hefty price to pay just to see Lloyd and Affleck brush shoulders. Weak narration and vague tones of Clooney’s style vary occasionally. There is little to The Tender Bar, it is neither tender nor is a bar of quality surpassed. Resentful feelings and family ties all bubble over in this melting pot of neutered emotions. No amount of starstruck qualities from Sheridan can work. Those awkward moments around the breakfast table are organised with little tact. They are just that. Awkward. Like Clooney’s work at the best of times.