Review of The Tender Bar (2021) by Mauro_Lanari — 08 Jan 2022

(Mauro Lanari).

The film's mood and feeling are enclosed in its final song, "Do It Again" by Steely Dan, an extraordinary track from 1972 albeit with a flaw: it lasts a little too much, doesn't have enough ideas to justify its duration. All the more reason the problem afflicts Clooney's 104 minutes that seem an uninterrupted expression of the "current of tenderness" attributed by Freud to the latency stage, as if the protagonist's libido had remained fixed to it even after puberty and the onset of adult sexual activity. And Affleck's role as a paternal surrogate is the same one he had towards Damon in "Will Hunting".