Netflix has ‘Maestro’ mania. But for this music critic, the essence of Lenny is missing

“Maestro” is pretty good. Besides being a great conductor, composer, pianist and educator, Bernstein wrote a winning bestseller, “Joy of Music,” and thankfully “Maestro” is not joyless. At the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where I saw “Maestro” as part of the AFI Fest, Jamie Bernstein jubilantly introduced the screening by saying that Bradley Cooper — the film’s director and star — nailed her dad. Cooper was strongly influenced by Jamie Bernstein’s memoir, “Famous Father Girl,” and in fine Hollywood fashion better realizes not what made her father famous but what he was really like. Tom had little patience for Lenny’s late-night bouts of insecurity and, by his telling, was able to trim some of the excesses from Bernstein’s 1973 Norton Lectures, “The Unanswered Question,” at Harvard University.