Even in an average film, George Clooney could still land him an Oscar
A megastar's existential crisis unfolds as George Clooney's character faces the ultimate question: has success destroyed the person he once was?
“You’re the American dream … You’re a good movie star. You make a lot of people happy.” These comments to handsome Hollywood star Jay Kelly (a perfectly cast George Clooney) go to the heart of the comedy-drama Jay Kelly, directed and co-written by American filmmaker Noah Baumbach. The first comes from 60-year-old Kelly’s manager Ron Sukenick (an excellent Adam Sandler). The second from his estranged daughter Jessica (Riley Keough).
The question is: does Kelly make the people outside the cinema, the people close to him, happy? Further, is it his life that is a dream, a continuous exercise in pretending? As his one-time acting school classmate Timothy (Billy Crudup) asks him: “Is there a person in there?”
Kelly is having some sort of personality crisis. He is mobbed-for-selfies famous and rich enough to use private jets but what has he willingly sacrificed to achieve this? His family? His friends? Himself? And underneath this emotional turbulence is an actor’s characteristic insecurity.
In a stand-out scene Kelly walks past a photograph of Paul Newman and then looks at himself in a mirror. He says the names of old-fashioned movie stars, such as Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and after each he says “Jay Kelly”. Finally he says “Robert De Niro” but this time hesitates to say his own name. I won’t be surprised if Clooney receives an Oscar nomination for this performance.
“Being a star is a whole other layer of headf..ck,’’ his first acting teacher tells him in a flashback scene. Kelly will learn this is true. Yet, how much of the headf..k is you?
In one scene, Jessica remembers her 10-year-old self watching her father do in a movie what he did not do at home: be a present parent. Kelly tells her that his career “has got to mean something”. She replies: “What if it didn’t?”
The plot unfolds in two main sequences. In the first, Kelly has wrapped his latest film and is thinking about taking a break. The director who launched his career, Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), dies and at his memorial service Kelly runs into Timothy. The two go for a drink and what starts out as an acting school reunion turns nasty. Later, a flashback to the audition for Schneider (Charlie Rowe and Louis Partridge are the young Kelly and Timothy respectively) shows us the backstory, and it’s perhaps a sign of what is to come.
Then Kelly’s 18-year-old daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) tells him she’s off to France and Italy for the summer. Kelly, anxious that he will now lose touch with his second daughter, does the same, entourage in tow. An extended train trip in Italy, with no first class cabin, is a highlight.
Sandler is superb. It’s a reminder of what he can do as a dramatic actor, as he did in the 2019 crime thriller Uncut Gems and in Baumbach’s 2017 film The Meyerowitz Stories. Ron is the closest to Kelly, and takes home 15 per cent of his earnings, but he, too, has lost something as a result. The sadness of choosing one person over another is expressed when Liz tells him: “Jay always came first.”
This film is well-made and entertaining but it is not as complex or as thoughtful as earlier Baumbach works such as The Squid and the Whale (2005), the animated Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), featuring Clooney, Frances Ha (2012), The Meyerowitz Stories and Marriage Story (2019). It poses some interesting ideas but doesn’t follow them through. Kelly describes his father as a “rageful, bitter egomaniac’’ but when he appears (played by Stacy Keach) it’s incidental. Timothy warns that “If people knew what I know about Jay Kelly’’ but nothing much comes of that.
Kelly’s final lines, during which Clooney looks directly into the camera and speaks to us, are powerful. The film could have used more of that.
Rating: 3/5
Jay Kelly is streaming on Netflix from December 5.
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