Jay Kelly
George Clooney plays a suave, charismatic movie star facing an existential crisis in Noah Baumbach’s smart, tragi-comic treatise on identity and self-delusion.
Cine-cynosure: Laura Dern, George Clooney and Alan Sandler
Image courtesy of Netflix.
John Lennon wrote, “life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” Jay Kelly doesn’t know what the capital of Croatia is or the name of Agamemnon’s wife. But what he lacks in the knowledge of facts, he makes up for in emotional intelligence. He reckons. For most of his professional life he has channelled his self-confidence and charm into a top-tier career as a movie star and has managed to protect himself from the hardships of the outside world, the very meat and potatoes that a more serious performer might consider the essential nutrients of acting. But, heh, Jay Kelly is a success, because he has a swimming pool and owns a private jet and because those closest to him tell him he is a success. But those closest to him are his manager, his accountant, agent, publicist, business manager and God knows who else. They are the people that he pays to make his world tick like clockwork. But Jay Kelly is not fifty-five anymore…
There is a moment in Jay Kelly when our protagonist faces his reflection in the mirror and utters the names of iconic movies stars of yore, punctuated by his own: “Jay Kelly. Gary Cooper. Jay Kelly. Cary Grant. Jay Kelly. Clark Gable. Jay Kelly…” Appropriately, he concludes with the name of a current movie star, who made his own speech to a mirror a moment of iconic cinema: Robert De Niro. But Kelly is more of a star in the George Clooney mould than De Niro. And so it is a coup for the co-writer-director Noah Baumbach to have landed George Clooney in the title role, so much so that it is often hard to separate the actor from the actor he is playing. When Kelly finds himself on a train in second-class, he is surrounded by “real people,” who immediately bend to his comfortable charisma and patronising ways. For them it is an honour to breathe the same air as Jay Kelly, and he knows it. He is in Italy to attend a tribute to his career and on a whim he takes the train in order to surprise his daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), who is on a European trip with her friends. It is to Daisy that he boasts about his emotional intelligence, blissfully unaware that she is light years more mature than he.
Jay was hoping she would accompany him to the tribute, as it suddenly seems to hold no meaning without his real family around him to bask in his reflected glory. But Daisy is not interested in his career; she wanted him as a father when he was too busy winning the hearts and minds of complete strangers. The same wisdom is uttered by his other daughter, Jessica (Riley Keough), and suddenly Jay feels that his life of luxury and acclaim has been a false achievement.
There is really no star around today who could better inhabit the perma-tan, bright teeth and easy-going smile of Jay Kelly than George Clooney. But Clooney is a better actor than Jay Kelly, the latter so locked into his own persona that he doesn’t recognise himself anymore. And like many self-centred individuals, Jay Kelly just doesn’t listen to other people, so often interrupting the answers to the questions that he himself has asked – he is always more interested in telling his own story.
While Jay Kelly, the film, might well appeal more to Hollywood insiders, it is smart enough to capture a wider audience. Directed by Noah Baumbach from a screenplay he co-wrote with the English actress Emily Mortimer (herself the daughter of the novelist, playwright and scenarist Sir John Mortimer), the film benefits from a certain insider knowledge. The movie in fact opens with a magnificent single shot, paying homage to Robert Altman’s The Player, itself an insider’s story on Tinseltown. But it is not just movie stars who adorn themselves in a persona. To quote John Lennon, many of us forget to live our lives as we take the starring role in a sort of homemade screenplay. Baumbach and Mortimer have scripted some great lines about the movie star experience and, more importantly, about identity and what it means to be human. In the words of Tim Galligan (Billy Crudup), a fellow alumnus of Kelly’s drama school, “we’re only successful once we’ve made ourselves irrelevant.” Wow. And as regards the actor who doesn’t appear to be acting: “Do you know how hard it is to be yourself?” asks Kelly’s drama school coach (Sir Lenny Henry). It’s a perfect observation, then, for Kelly to recycle as a shield against idle censure.
George Clooney is terrific, but so, too, is Adam Sandler as his manager and babysitter Ron Sukenick, who has made a career pretending that Jay Kelly is a friend. What or whoever Sandler is playing may be a rough approximation of his own persona, but at least he brings some much-needed humour to the film. Only Sandler could get away with a line like, “if it feels good, don’t do it” – and make it sound real. And there is a magnificent supporting cast, including Jim Broadbent and Eve Hewson, and Baumbach’s own wife Greta Gerwig as Ron Sukenick’s long-suffering other half.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Stacy Keach, Billy Crudup, Jim Broadbent, Riley Keough, Patrick Wilson, Grace Edwards, Eve Hewson, Greta Gerwig, Emily Mortimer, Alba Rohrwacher, Nicôle Lecky, Josh Hamilton, Thaddea Graham, Lenny Henry, Isla Fisher, Juliet Cowan, Philip Arditti, Kyle Soller, Parker Sawyers, Sadie Sandler, Sharon Rooney, Janine Duvitski, Jamie Demetriou, Patsy Ferran, May Nivola, Alex Jarrett, Charlie Rowe, Louis Partridge, Giovanni Esposito, Debora Weston, Noah Baumbach.
Dir Noah Baumbach, Pro Noah Baumbach, Amy Pascal and David Heyman, Screenplay Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer, Ph Linus Sandgren, Pro Des Mark Tildesley, Ed Valerio Bonelli and Rachel Durance, Music Nicholas Britell, Costumes Jacqueline Durran, Sound Rowan Watson, Dialect coaches Emma Stevens-Johnson and Thom Jones.
Pascal Pictures/Heyday Films/NB/GG Pictures-Netflix.
131 mins. USA/UK/Italy. 2025. UK and US Rel: 5 December 2025. Cert. 15.
