'The Tender Bar' review: Warmhearted movie that's hard to resist

Charles Simic, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, has a story about emigrating to America from Serbia as a teenager and falling in with a crowd of working-class intellectuals in Chicago. "Remember where you came from, kid," he recalls them saying — advice for which he remains grateful. "Thanks to them," he wrote, "I failed in my natural impulse to become a phony."

J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, comes from the less exotic locale of Manhasset and found his mentors at his uncle’s bar, called Dickens (after the author). Even as Moehringer attended Yale University and launched his career at The New York Times, these deep-thinking drinkers kept him grounded. His 2005 memoir, "The Tender Bar," is now a movie directed by George Clooney and featuring Ben Affleck as the memorable uncle. It's basically a series of fond vignettes that don't quite add up to a proper story, but the movie has just enough charm and sweetness to get by.

"The Tender Bar" begins in the early 1970s and introduces us to a young J.R. (Daniel Ranieri) being raised by a single mother, Dorothy (Lily Rabe), and a cantankerous Grandpa (Christopher Lloyd). Dad is not in the picture. He’s a freewheeling, hard-partying radio DJ nicknamed The Voice (a very good Max Martini) because that’s basically all J.R. knows of him. In one of the film’s most touching scenes, the kid stays up nights, hoping his father will float out of the radio.

If anyone’s a dad to J.R., it’s Affleck as Uncle Charlie, a highly literate yet unpretentious bar owner. Affleck the celebrity may be in the doghouse (following recent remarks about his divorce from Jennifer Garner) but Affleck the actor is on a roll this year, first as a medieval hedonist in "The Last Duel" and now as the charming, worldly-wise Charlie. You might find yourself jotting down some of his sage advice: Hide some extra money in your wallet, never order well Scotch neat and be sure to take philosophy in college, "because there’s no right answers."

As J.R. attends Yale — making good on his mother’s all-consuming dream — he must find his own way. Now played by Tye Sheridan, J.R. falls hard for Sidney (Briana Middleton). He’s captivated by this smart, sophisticated (and very wealthy) beauty, though she seems to consider him little more than a good time. Fraught issues of class, sex and gender bubble below the surface here, but never quite explode. (William Monahan, of "The Departed," wrote the low-key screenplay.)

A warning to Long Islanders: "The Tender Bar" was shot in Boston, and you can tell. Overall, though, it’s hard to resist this warmhearted movie. It's a love letter from one man to the hometown that made him who he is.