Jay Kelly isn’t just about movie star narcissism—it’s an act of it as well.
Noah Baumbach’s saccharine, toothless, and cheesily meta film is headlined by George Clooney as a thinly veiled proxy for himself who suffers a crisis of conscience when a chance encounter makes him fear that he’s missed out on the most important things in life.
Straining to thread a needle so that it bittersweetly laments its A-lister’s shortcomings while nonetheless forgiving him for them, it’s a grating fiction-mirrors-reality tale—screening at the New York Film Festival ahead of its debut in theaters (Nov. 14) and on Netflix (Dec. 5)—which mistakenly assumes that the woe-is-me routines of the rich and famous are the stuff of great drama.
Jay Kelly (Clooney) is a Clooney-esque leading man who’s beloved worldwide for his big-screen triumphs. Still, in-between his latest productions, he’s disappointed to hear that 18-year-old daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) won’t be hanging out with him; instead, she’s spending her summer before college traveling around Europe with her friends. Jay remarks that he doesn’t want her to go because he’ll be lonely, to which Daisy replies that he’s never alone—a fact borne out by a servant promptly handing him a drink—and that contradiction is central to the man’s existence, in which there’s never a shortage of admirers and handlers but precious little in the way of legitimate love and consideration.
The person closest to Jay is Ron (Adam Sandler), his manager, who waits on him hand and foot, even when it interferes with his obligations to wife Lois (Greta Gerwig) and their two kids—which, of course, is always. In this Hollywood stratosphere, everything revolves around Jay, although chinks in his impenetrable upper-crust armor appear when he’s notified that Peter (Jim Broadbent), the director who gave him his big break, has passed away.
At the funeral, Jay gladhands with aplomb and, on the sidewalk, runs into old pal Timothy (Billy Crudup). They go for drinks, during which their happy reminiscences—they were both in the same acting class—turn ugly thanks to Timothy’s bitterness over the fact that Jay “stole” his shot at the spotlight. A fight ensues, and afterwards, Jay decides to ditch his upcoming feature and chase Daisy around France and Italy, using a tribute award in Tuscany (which he’d turned down, but now wants) as an excuse for the getaway.
Ron and publicist Liz (Laura Dern) aren’t on board with this plan, yet they have no power to stop it, this despite their self-anointed roles as their client’s surrogate parents. Jay thus embarks on a European odyssey that spurs memories of pivotal incidents gone by, and Baumbach stages these passages in self-consciously cinematic fashion (they deliberately resonate as “scenes”) that speaks to Jay’s late confession that “all my memories are movies.”
In these flashbacks, Jay betrays Timothy and wows Peter, and he has a testy visit with his older daughter Jessica (Riley Keough), who takes him to a therapist session where he’s confronted with his crimes of abandonment and selfishness. Jay feels badly about his deficiencies, but he hides his sorrow behind a veneer of charismatic cheer—on a train through Italy, he charms the pants off passengers, who help him get in touch with ordinary folk, and whom he invites to the tribute—and, additionally, the makeup applied by his assistants to cover up his Timothy-provided black eye.
Jay is a dapper matinee idol who, off-screen, is a me-first careerist. The proceedings paint a kindhearted portrait of his regrets, which are echoed by those of Ron and Liz, who used to be an item before being torn apart by their duties to Jay. Oh the suffering they all endure in service of the star’s continued success, and Baumbach (working from a script written with Emily Mortimer, who briefly appears as Jay’s hair stylist) wallows in their remorse.
Nonetheless, he refrains from pressing the point too strongly, since for all Jay’s failings, he’s entertained millions of fans and left a legacy that, as proven by a climactic greatest-hits montage, brings rapturous tears to moviegoers’ eyes. That those clips are from real Clooney films merely italicizes the thin line separating truth from make-believe, as does a Baumbach cameo as one of Jay’s past directors and a closing fourth-wall break that strives to pull at the heartstrings over Jay’s (and Clooney’s) self-pitying plight.
On more than one occasion, Jay remarks that it’s difficult to play yourself, and Clooney more or less proves that as a cardboard cut-out version of himself, who struggles with having to constantly perform (for the camera and the public), and who tries to bridge divides in the only way he knows how: by inviting his loved ones (including his dad, played by Stacy Keach) to a celebration of his illustrious career.
Baumbach gussies up Jay’s journey with a bit of derring-do that lands him on Page Six, and mounting friction between the actor and Ron, the latter of whom—who’s also there to represent second-tier star Ben Alcock (Patrick Wilson)—grows frustrated with the idea that Jay considers him an employee more than a friend. Throughout, the film is merely a paean to the pain and glory of being the toast of Tinseltown, dully alternating between commiserating with its protagonist (who knows he’s fallen short) and celebrating him for leaving a lasting cinematic mark.
Clooney nails Jay’s marquee magnetism and he makes a series of convincingly sorrowful faces, and Sandler is perfectly likable as the doting Ron, no matter that the character is a doormat desperate to be told that he hasn’t squandered everything for nothing (spoiler alert: he hasn’t!). Dern and Crudup are predictably solid as well, albeit in supporting parts designed to impart ideas more than resonate as actual people.
Ultimately, however, Jay Kelly is a long-form People magazine cover story that never gets beneath the surface of Hollywood fame. Sunset Boulevard this most certainly is not, as Baumbach treats Jay (and Clooney) with kid gloves, content to coddle and console as much as he censures. Consequently, and in conjunction with its persistent meta flourishes, the film resonates as merely the vainest sort of vanity project.
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