Writer/director Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly” depicts a celebrated movie star (George Clooney) as he tries to get his personal life together, while traveling to a prestigious film festival where he will receive a lifetime achievement award.
Clooney’s Jay Kelly has a team of assistants includes his loyal manager (Adam Sandler) and an annoyed publicist (Laura Dern). Along the way, Kelly reflects on his choice to pick his career over being a father and how he once aced a script reading that gave him a big break but ruined his friendship with a nervous, less prepared actor and former friend.
“Jay Kelly” is a self-congratulatory dud. Everything about it is low stakes, starting with the big incident (a fight at a bar) that is supposed to build towards a dramatic reconciliation but never does. In fact, this subplot is settled with a simple phone call and, like most of Kelly’s problems, just fades away.
The same goes for the father/daughter conflict, as everything is tidied up neatly in the everybody wins conclusion.
The real issue explored here is that Kelly’s team realizes that there’s a difference between being his actual friend versus being a part of the machine that creates his opportunities for success. Okay, but this is also wrapped up with hugs and a reminder that everyone visible is living a swanky existence based on the career of one man.
“Jay Kelly” is nearly plotless and ambles from one scene to another but without the rapid patter a farce about Hollywood needs. Everything about it is too slow, too chill and too low stakes, which is a problem when your film has no real tension but still manages to clock in at two and a half hours long.
It may surprise readers to know that I like most of Clooney’s films, don’t care about his life outside of his work as an actor and director and have forgiven him for once playing Batman. Nevertheless, halfway through “Jay Kelly,” I began to wonder with astonishment:
Does Clooney think he’s underrated?
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“Jay Kelly” may as well have just been titled Being George Clooney, as the character recalls that he arrived around the time of the “first ‘90210’” and, in a painfully shameless moment, Kelly stares at himself in a mirror and compares himself to Cary Grant.
Then there’s the much-discussed final scene where (not really a spoiler) Kelly watches a montage of his film work and, instead of it being fake clips starring the young actor who ably played Kelly early on, it’s all snippets from Clooney’s real film career.
It’s a bizarre choice, because it once again underlines how Clooney should have played “himself” instead of the thinly veiled Kelly and, seriously, are we supposed to get teary-eyed, as Clooney visibly does, looking at clips from “The Peacemaker” (2007) and “Leatherheads” (2008)?
Considering how Clooney did a 2012 Oscar roundtable interview where he bashed “The Thin Red Line” (1998) and writer/director Terrence Malick, bragging that he was glad to get cut out of most of the movie, it seems disingenuous to have that clip here.
For this movie to work, you need an actor with a long career that has had lots of ups and downs and was never as popular as Clooney, who is an Oscar winner, former People Magazine “Sexiest Man Alive” and played Danny Ocean three times.
No matter how you feel about Clooney, his film career is too much of a success story to merit a down-on-his-luck quasi-kinda-sorta-biopic.
Watching Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler” (2008) is to witness an artist battle his past glories and missteps in raw self-analysis; here, I never bought it. Clooney has conveyed insecurity much better in other movies and typically appears more vulnerable during interviews when he laments about “Batman & Robin” (1997).
My easy picks for a Kelly recast would be Michael Douglas or Michael Keaton, only the former did this kind of late-career soul searching vehicle in “Solitary Man” (2009) and the latter already made the far more daring, thematically similar and superior “Birdman” (2024).
Here’s another idea: swap the roles played by Clooney and Sandler! Although now rightfully acknowledged as an astonishing dramatic actor, Sandler’s career early on had a hard-won trajectory – actually, scratch that, Sandler already did this kind of movie: Judd Apatow’s wonderful “Funny People” (2009).
Here’s another dread-inducing thought I had while watching “Jay Kelly”:
Has the monster success of “Barbie” (2023) spoiled Baumbach? Did co-writing that gigantic hit give Baumbach, formerly an industry outsider, an ongoing desire to find for mainstream acceptance?
It’s hard to believe that Baumbach, the author of bitter, defiantly unpleasant dramas that are a challenge for his actors as much as his audience, would want to make something this fluffy and inconsequential.
Where is the Baumbach who authored and directed the caustic “Greenberg” (2010) or the vicious “Margot at the Wedding” (2007) or the brutal “Marriage Story” (2019) and “The Squid and the Whale” (2005)? Baumbach opens “Jay Kelly” with a showy one-take shot that in no way matches, let alone deserves comparison to, the start of Robert Altman’s “The Player” (1992).
Baumbach’s latest is glossy and completely unnecessary.
The saving grace of “Jay Kelly” is Sandler who, once again, demonstrates that he has the heart of a character actor and, when tested, can play just about anyone.
If one is really needing to celebrate Clooney’s contribution to cinema, I recommend revisiting “Michael Clayton” (2007), “O Brother Where Art Thou?” (2000), “Up in the Air” (2009), “Out of Sight” (1998), “Solaris” (2002), “Three Kings” (1999), “The Descendants” (2011) and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009).
I’d even throw in a forgotten gem like “The Good German” (2006). Clooney’s is terrific in all of those. At the opposite end, I’d pick “Ticket to Paradise” (2022) and this movie.
One and a half stars (out of four)
“Jay Kelly” is a self-congratulatory dud.”
All I need to know.