Jay Kelly review: George Clooney’s magnetism almost saves this sombre character study of a movie star in crisis
How Hollywood loves to turn the lens on itself is no new thing. Jay Kelly, the new Netflix release starring George Clooney as a pensive movie star, is another addition to the list. That Noah Baumbach has now made a film about stardom – one that is reflective at best- is quite a shift. He is certainly no longer the indie filmmaker who made The Squid and the Whale and Frances Ha, and that’s okay. But Jay Kelly is so generous in spirit and so mellow in its reflection on the price of stardom that it feels like a different filmmaker altogether. There is none of his self-aware irony and whiffs of situational comedy that made his films so singularly his. I suppose it is a shift in the director’s own journey, following the acclaim of Marriage Story and the massive success of Barbie, for which he co-wrote the script.
The premise
In Jay Kelly, which Baumbach co-wrote with actor Emily Mortimer, the lens is on Hollywood itself, but the tone is decidedly one-note, pensive and moody. It is not as affecting, but feels rather thin and stretched at times. Jay Kelly is going through a crisis. He is followed around by his team, including his manager, Ron (Adam Sandler), and his publicist, Liz (Laura Dern, sparkling in a thankless role). They fail to keep up with him because he is either too much or never enough, always at a distance. A chance encounter with an old friend Timothy (Billy Crudup, who steals the show in just one extended scene), rattles him over the cycle of events that led to his stardom. Timothy accuses him of stealing his career, his performance, his life… and Jay cannot shake that off so easily as he would like too. So he decides to cut his schedule to embark on a journey to Italy to accept a tribute, but really to follow his daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards). The film, meandering at times and generously spirited in the next moment, cruises along with a lovely pace.
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Movie Review
Jay Kelly
Famous movie star Jay Kelly and his devoted manager, Ron, embark on an unexpectedly profound journey through Europe.
Cast
George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup
It is George Clooney who saves the day. He is a movie star who plays a movie star in this sombre character study. Note how his real name also has a similar ring to Jay Kelly. Is Clooney borrowing from his own life to play this man? He definitely knows a thing or two about becoming the centre of attention in any room, so it is quite the meta-narrative of sorts, which heightens the performance of the Oscar winner to a degree. It is a performance that can only come from a life lived, from having stepped in through the movie star experience, and Clooney’s face and persona, his entire physical presence that looms large on almost every frame of the film, infuse that much-needed focus into the film.
However, Jay Kelly the film seems willfully unaware of its own lead. Baumbach presents him as a movie star aching of a life spent in chasing his dreams, examining how his choices left many with no other choice but to leave. Jay Kelly offers the humility to its movie star, and he gets the chance to re-imagine his life at certain points. This is his story to retell. Yet, in its generosity, the film erases out anything else about the state of filmmaking, the creative process that must have balanced out with the business of the game, and more. The film offers an excessive sweetness, underscoring a thin script that never seems to grasp its own subject matter. Nicholas Brittell’s score is beautiful as ever, and when the film does move towards the lush Italian countryside, Linus Sandgren’s cinematography makes the frames more alive than what the words offer.
What works
However, it is Adam Sandler who emerges as the biggest takeaway from Jay Kelly. As the devoted manager who considers Jay Kelly as more than just a star, he gives a wonderfully nuanced performance. A little scene with him and Laura Dern might just be the closest the film gets to spending some time outside the devoted shadow of stardom. It is Sandler’s best performance in years, finally getting to showcase his dramatic acting chops. In Sandler’s many silences, Jay Kelly expands and confronts the truth of surviving showbiz from the sidelines.
Jay Kelly is a film stuck in the middle, like the train it shows, in want of something bigger, better, more real. It needs a signal or two, always. However, as the film comes to a close in those beautiful moments inside the darkness of a theatre, it stands as an irony that the film was released on Netflix, on the day when the platform made a landmark acquisition of Warner Bros. The film offers no reflection on the medium itself or its future, because of its own indulgence.
