Film Review: Jay Kelly

Jay Kelly
Director: Noah Baumbach
Pascal Pictures, Heyday Films, NB/GG Pictures
In Theaters: 11.21.2025

Strong reviews can easily give the impression that a movie is going to appeal to everyone (which is often not the case) and sometimes I really need to make it clear that just because I liked a movie doesn’t mean that I think most people will connect with it. I’m one of the few people who attended the local press screening of Noah Baumbach‘s Jay Kelly who responsively liked the film, yet I’m hard-pressed to think of many people who I could specifically recommend it to as a must-see movie.

Jay Kelly (George Clooney, Ocean’s Eleven) an aging, once-beloved actor struggling to keep his career and personal life intact, unravels after a tense day on set and the arrival of the news that his mentor, Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent, Moulin Rouge!, Iris), the director who gave him his big break, has unexpectedly died shortly after Jay declined to make an appearance in his next film due to his commitment to a hotter project. Hoping to reconnect with his college-bound daughter Daisy (Riley Keough, Logan Lucky, Daisy Jones & The Six), Jay  impulsively follows her to Europe, putting the project in jeopardy. Following Jay are his longtime manager, Ron (Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems, Happy Gilmore) and Jay’s publicist, Liz (Laura Dern, Jurassic Park, Marriage Story), who are starting to wonder what’s left of themselves after years spent holding Jay together, and also facing the realization that just because they devote their lives to him doesn’t mean that they are equals… or even friends. They are faced with a challenge when Jay’s former acting-school roommate, Timothy (Billy Crudup, Almost Famous, Watchmen) sues Jay for assault stemming from a fight outside a bar, while Jay’s attempt at a quiet father-daughter reunion crumbles into anger and embarrassment. As he chases Daisy across France and into Italy, Ron arranges a lifetime achievement tribute in Italy to account for Jay’s sudden disappearance to Europe. While in Tuscany, surrounded by admirers yet increasingly alone, Jay is forced to confront the relationships he has damaged — and whether he can salvage any of them before the cameras roll again.

Jay Kelly is very much the kind of film that is adored by some and eschewed by others for being a movie about Hollywood people, and this is always a bit frustrating to me. We can make a thousand movies about sports and the love of the game, and how baseball marks time, and so on. However if La La Land, which is really a universal film about giving up everything for your dreams, happens to be set in Los Angeles and involve the movie business, “Hollywood sure is in love with itself.” On the surface, Jay Kelly may be a Hollywood insider movie about selfish and privileged people who can be difficult to like or root for, but the same can (and should) be said of Challengers and tennis, yet no one seemed to mind it. It’s true that Jay is a maddeningly self-centered person: he’s so used to the world revolving around him that he genuinely believes that the daughter he was never there for will actually want to attend a tribute in his honor and may even come around to loving him if she does. It’s remarkably easy to hate Jay, but it’s surprisingly hard not to like him, which is not only the essence of the character, it’s the essence of many career artists and performers. Every actor who lives a thousand lives on screen or stage for fear of living one in the real world faces a moment of reckoning. I found the character and the story both sadly and hilariously truthful to my own experiences in film and theater communities, and I disagree with anyone who believes that the film indicts Jay or lets him off the hook. Instead, it leaves him to do both to himself, and ultimately, he’s never going to listen to anyone else. Jay Kelly is a story about regret, longing, great triumph and abject failure, and the tendency of “great men” to feel the need to bring other people into this world while feeling less need to be there for them. Ultimately, it’s a movie about choices.

Clooney is terrific as Jay, bringing his winning smile and irascible charm to a character who very few other actors could pull off. While Tom Cruise could have absolutely nailed the larger-than-life persona as well as the myriad shortcomings, I believe he lacks Clooney’s self awareness and would have felt the need to play it with a clearer redemptive arc. I find myself jumping to Cruise as my clear reference point, both because elements of the film reminded me of Jerry Maguire, and because I’ll never stop liking him no matter how much I hate him. Sandler gives the kind of wonderfully low key and nuanced performance that he does so brilliantly when he’s not doing the exact opposite, and my only complaint with Dern’s perfection is that not enough screen time is devoted to her. Keough gives the most emotionally compelling performance, and I suspect that the casting of the granddaughter of Elvis Presley in the role of Jay’s lost daughter, especially when you add the presence of Eve Hewson (Bad Sisters, Flora and Son), the  daughter of U2 frontman Bono, as Daphne, the actress whom Jay still pines for and who he spent his time with rather than being with Daisy in her most formative years.

Jay Kelly is definitely not for everyone, and frankly, part of me really resents how much it was for me, especially since this second time Netflix has made me watch a depressing film about a self-centered artist at a crossroads having some form of midlife crisis on the night of my birthday (Tick,Tick… Boom! and Jay Kelly. Really, Netflix?) And yes, there’s a lot of first world white male privilege to it. Nevertheless, as an aging guy who frequently looks back on my past with a romanticized viewpoint, yet would do almost everything differently if I got another chance, Baumbach’s angsty tragicomedy spoke to me in a way that’s hard to shake off. —Patrick Gibbs

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