The Tender Bar: The Main Characters, Ranked By Intelligence

Ben Affleck stars in the latest Amazon drama movie, The Tender Bar. The movie is based on the memoir by writer J.R. Moehringer, a coming-of-age story full of rich and interesting characters. The main one is a young man named JR as he learns about life from his bartender uncle.

The Tender Bar – The Main Characters, Ranked By Likability

Along the way, he meets different people and that all have a strong influence on his growth as a man. Not everyone is kind and overly likable, and not all of them give the best advice, but there is something to learn by everyone he runs across. By the end of the movie, JR’s journey wouldn’t have been possible if not for the intelligent characters he came into contact with.

8 Young JR

It was important to meet young JR to see what caused him to become the young man that he grew into. He had a lot of interactions as a child with his mother, who had big plans for him, and his father, who didn’t care about him at all.

Of course, young JR was a child, so he was easily the least intelligent character in the movie. However, he was always wide-eyed and curious and it was those traits that helped him grow into the man he would become.

7 Johnny

Johnny Michaels is JR’s dad, and he is the villain of The Tender Bar. He left Dorothy when she was pregnant with their baby and was an absentee father. JR always wanted to find his dad, and he would listen to him on the radio, where he worked as a popular DJ.

However, while JR believed his dad was a smart man, he learned otherwise when he finally tracked him down. After just a few minutes, Johnny beat up Uncle Charlie and proved that he was a bad person and JR finally chose to walk away and never look back.

6 Dorothy

JR’s mom Dorothy Maguire made one very smart decision in The Tender Bar. She took JR after her abusive husband abandoned them, and moved back home with her parents. This intelligent decision put her and JR in a safer place, and inadvertently put him in contact with his Uncle Charlie, who helped him out.

Charlie is a much more intelligent role model for JR than his dad was and he made smarter suggestions that JR’s mom. While she wanted what was best for her son, she was determined that Charlie become a lawyer, which pushed him away from her. By the end, JR reached his dreams.

5 Grandpa Maguire

There was a huge contrast between Grandpa Maguire and Charlie, his son. Charlie was a self-educated man who went on to open his own bar. His real-world experience helped him serve as a mentor to JR. However, grandpa was a college educated man.

Played by Christopher Lloyd, Grandpa went to, and graduate from Dartmouth and looked upon that achievement as a source of pride. However, while Charlie built his own business with his self-taught ways, grandpa did almost nothing with his life after he graduated, yet still managed to look down on his children for not living up to his expectations.

4 Sidney

Sidney is a difficult character in The Tender Bar. She is clearly a smart woman, meeting JR while they attend Yale. However, she treats him horribly, keeping him holding on while cheating on him. When she decides to marry someone else, it finally pushes JR into drinking more.

Sidney disappears at the end, but the entire purpose of her character is to treat JR similar to how his father did, abandoning him and making him feel unwanted and unloved. She is not a good person, but she is clearly intelligent.

3 Wesley

Wesley is JR’s friend from Yale and he is there for him when he needs someone to talk to. While JR is chasing Sidney while in college, it is Wesley that actually provides the support that he needs to help him with the ups and downs of life.

As a student at Yale, it is obvious that Wesley is as smart as JR and Sidney. However, intelligence is more than IQ points, and when Wesley gives JR the best advice he ever received concerning his love life, he proved to be the smartest of JR’s peers and one of the most likable characters in The Tender Bar.

2 JR

While JR wasn’t always the smartest person in the movie, the fact is that he was the one who grew the most throughout the movie. Played by Tye Sheridan, JR knew that he couldn’t get life advice from his dad, who was a terrible role model. As a result, he sought out his Uncle Charlie.

It was then that he started to make better decisions and try to make his way in the world. He listened to Charlie and stopped doing what everyone else expected of him and finally made his way to his true calling in the end of becoming a writer.

1 Charlie

Charlie is a bartender, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a smart man, as he is the most intelligent member of The Tender Bar cast of characters. JR never learned anything from his father and while his mom loved him, she had her own problems. However, Charlie was there for him.

Charlie gave him the advice he needed, a grounded look at what JR needed to do to get through life. He is who steered JR to what he needed to be doing with his life and took up for him when he made these tough decisions. He gave JR the life lessons he needed and was the one with the best advice in the end.

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