The Tender Bar

Year 15, Day 161 - 6/10/23 - Movie #4,462

BEFORE: Spent most of today working at the Tribeca Film Festival, or, rather, for one of the movie theaters that hosts the festival - I wasn't working directly for the Festival itself, just indirectly.  But I stayed up the night before and watched this as a Saturday movie - but now I think I need to skip Sunday by not starting a movie on Saturday night, and then I'll watch a movie on Sunday night, but it will count as my Monday movie.  Makes sense?  Still, it's about one week until Father's Day, so here's another example of a film about fathers, or absent fathers, or surrogate fathers, they call count toward my total.  Just like I had two films that were appropriate for Memorial Day, I've had a number of films planned for my chain that are father-based, that just increases my chances of landing one on the holiday itself. I'm still right on track.

Ben Affleck carries over from "Air" and pulls even with Matt Damon in the number of appearances for the year so far.  But it seems that the chain really wants me to focus on DC Comics movies this year, rather than Marvel ones, I've watched the "Shazam" sequel and I have two more DC movies coming up before June ends.  Then, if I decide to go see "The Flash" in a movie theater in July (which I think the chain will allow), Ben Affleck would take the lead over Matt Damon.  Meanwhile, tonight's film stars one actor who played Batman and was directed by another, George Clooney. 

THE PLOT: A boy growing up on Long Island seeks out father figures among the patrons at his uncle's bar. 

AFTER: This film's a bit like "Senior Year", in that it fulfills both June themes - "Dads and grads."  The main character is raised by his mother and doesn't really know his father, not at first, anyway, but looks up to his uncle LIKE a father, and also finds more paternal figures to idolize at the local bar.  At the same time, he's encouraged by his mother all through high school to apply to Yale, and so therefore at some point he becomes a high-school graduate, then later in the film, a college graduate.  This movie is so appropriate for June, it's not even funny. 

This is based on a memoir by John "JR" Moehringer, so it makes sense that the young man at the center of the story grows up to be a writer, a memorist, yeah, sure, that tracks but I also tend to hate movies where the central character is a writer who writes about his life and that novel became...the movie you're watching now!  It's all just a bit too self-referential, isn't it?  And when did it become acceptable to write your memoirs before becoming famous?  Or to be famous FOR writing your memoirs, that almost feels like cheating, because if you didn't lead a truly extraordinary life up to that point, then why bother writing about it?  If George Clooney wrote a memoir, sure, turn that into a movie.  Charles Dickens wrote "David Copperfield" as an almost-memoir, but I think he certainly had enough interesting things happen to him that he could pull that off, but does sitting around in a bar and pining for your absent father constitute an interesting or extraordinary life?  I'm just not sure.  

Moehringer's personal memoir connected with enough people that Andre Agassi hired him to co-write his memoir, and then he also ghost-wrote "Shoe Dog", the memoir of Phil Knight, seen in yesterday's film "Air", and more recently he worked on Prince Harry's memoir, "Spare".  So yeah, I get it, but writing your own memoir and not already being famous still feels like cheating - it's apparently a short-cut to recognition, especially if the industry is "trending toward memoirs" - so if everybody else does it, it's OK?  Still not following.  Sure, I tried to turn my first marriage into a screenplay and I didn't have the time or the balls to finish it - so kudos for getting something published, I guess, but still, you used a short-cut.  People have also written novels about fictional characters, and some of those are quite popular - and those authors didn't just rely on the things that happened to them IRL.  Just saying. 

Moehringer grew up in Manhasset, just like JR Maguire in the movie - but he finished high school in Scottsdale, Arizona before attending Yale - but where is that in the film?  JR in the film just stays in Long Island, so, umm, where does reality stop and the fictional stuff start?  Jr in the film listens to his father, "The Voice" as he bounces around stations on the FM radio dial - and Moehringer's father was a DJ in NYC's WOR-FM who went by the name "Johnny Michaels".  JR Maguire in the movie works at the New York Times, which Moehringer also did, but the real writer also worked at the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado and for the L.A. Times in Orange County.  Would the film have been too complicated if JR had moved across the country like the author did?  Now I really don't know what to believe about this story....

There are a lot of loose ends here - JR's mother has her thyroid removed because of a tumor, but it turns out to be benign, not malignant.  OK, so why is that a big deal, then?  JR has his grandfather go with him to a father-and-son breakfast at school.  Well, sure, because his father's not in the picture, it makes sense.  But how does doing word puzzles at the bar get JR a spot on his uncle's bowling team?  That doesn't make logical sense.  These narrative threads might all be based on real events, but they just don't tie together in any way, nothing forms a larger picture here, instead they just all feel like flashes of memory from one person's recollections, but what the heck does it all mean to an outsider?  And why should I care?  

Right, the father stuff - that's why we're all here, right?  I mean, this film came on AmazonPrime in January of LAST year, 2022, and it took me that long to link to it - I'm glad I waited for the week before Father's Day, because in the end that kind of feels like where it belongs, but I'm still not sure what the film has to say about fathers, exactly.  OK, that some of them suck, that much is clear.  After a few visits from his Dad earlier in the film, JR is content to live his life looking up to his uncle instead, but Uncle Charlie encourages JR to track down his father in North Carolina, where he lives with his girlfriend and her (their?) daughter.  But Dad is still an abusive alcoholic, so JR has him arrested for beating up that girlfriend.  There's a lesson in there somewhere, I guess - don't go looking for somebody unless you're prepared to deal with them when you find them.  Or a leopard can't change his spots, make of it what you will. 

The majority of the film is set on Long Island, but as someone who was raised in New England, I can see it clearly wasn't shot there - because only New England states have the candlepin (small ball) bowling.  Yup, IMDB confirms the bowling scene was shot in Wakefield, Mass, and other scenes filmed in Beverly, Fitchburg, Wakefield, Ashby and Ipswich, all in the Bay State.  Sorry, Manhasset - but only little Massachusetts towns look crappy enough to pass for 1973-1986.  You can probably find little parts of those towns that haven't changed a bit since then.

Also starring Tye Sheridan (last seen in "The Card Counter"), Daniel Ranieri, Lily Rabe (last seen in "Finding Steve McQueen"), Christopher Lloyd (last seen in "The Postman Always Rings Twice"), Max Martini (last seen in "Columbiana"), Sondra James (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Michael Braun, Matthew Delamater (last seen in "Daddy's Home 2"), Max Casella (last seen in "The Rhythm Section"), Rhenzy Feliz (last heard in "Encanto"), Ivan Leung, Briana Middleton, Danielle Ranieri, Kate Avallone, Mark Boyett, Quincy Tyler Bernstine (last seen in "White Noise"), Ezra Knight, David Carl, Shannon Collis (last seen in "Inherent Vice"), Keira Jo Lassor, Jennifer C. Johnson, Michael Steven Costello (last seen in "Ted 2"), Kate Middleton (last seen in "Set It Up"), Jackson Damon (also carrying over from "Air"), Caroline Bergwall (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Jeff MacKinnon (ditto), Daniel Washington (last seen in "I Care a Lot"), Jenny Eagan, Billy Meleady (last seen in "Black Mass"), Mellanie Hubert, Jo-anne Lee, Leslie Luke, Melanie Blake Roth and the voice of Ron Livingston (last seen in "Lucky"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 packs of cigarettes (purchased by a minor, those were the days...)