OK, two rules. I'm never going to let you win. And I'm going to always tell you the truth. Your father is a deadbeat.
Sometimes it's hard to fathom why a story has been made into a film. I admit that I've not read the memoir of the same name by JR Moehringer but maybe it's more interesting than this film.
The premise is that young JR moves to his grandparents house when his Mum can no longer pay the bills. With his father absent and only existing as a voice on the radio, JR seeks a new father figure in the form of his Uncle Arthur (Ben Affleck) who runs a local bar.
By far the biggest problem with this film is that it's just not very interesting. The absent father figure is a pretty common thing in reality and in films and there's very little in this film that makes you feel the emotional impact it has on JR. There's a slightly unusual family set-up but it's not particularly fascinating with most of the characters barely having any dialogue let alone any character.
The heart of the film is JR's relationship with his Uncle Arthur. I quite liked Affleck's performance here and there's certainly a warmth in the character. At the same time though he's characterised pretty blandly, he's mostly just a nice father figure and though there's a hint of eccentricity and bad behaviour it was underdone.
The strength of this relationship means that it's quite frustrating when the older JR then heads to college and we see fairly little of that relationship from then on. The family stuff felt fairly generic but the college stuff is even more so, it being the story of JR having a relationship, struggling with being dumped and trying to work out what he wants to do with his life. Most people can probably relate to it but there's nothing remarkable about it.
I at least wanted there to be a crescendo, where maybe JR was really struggling with everything but even that didn't happen. He had a mild drinking problem and that's it. There's not even really an ending to the film, it just sort of stops. So much for the concept of having a beginning, a middle and an end- The Tender Bar only has a beginning.
I liked some of the performances, especially Ben Affleck and newcomer Daniel Ranieri but the script here is just dull. It's likeable enough with it's warm atmosphere but I'd forgotten most of the film before it had even finished playing.
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