Review: Jay Kelly (2025)

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There’s a marvellous scene early in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, where George Clooney’s eponymous movie star catches up over drinks with an old friend Tim, played by Billy Crudup. Tim used to be an actor as a young man, and was the star of the acting class they both were in when they were up-and-comers together in Los Angeles. In the quiet bar, Jay gets Tim to do his acting trick of reading the menu. After demuring, Tim agrees, and he quickly reads the bar menu in a bland, unaffected voice. Then, afterwards, he gathers himself, grows incredibly emotional, and reads the same menu again, only this time he’s so overwhelmed that he barely gets out the words as he fights back tears. Once Tim finishes reading the menu, he immediately drops the act, and declares, that’s the difference between acting and method acting. Jay is delighted and praises his old friend, saying he always was the better actor. And that’s where things go south.

At this moment, you can see the thoughts behind Crudup’s eyes, that he’s working up to say something but is worried about the consequences. But with a smile signalling, “What the hell,” Tim goes for it and tells Jay that he never liked him. He accuses Jay of only becoming famous because he stole the role that should’ve gone to him. The fond reunion is quickly abandoned, Jay gets up to leave, but Tim follows him to the parking lot, sure to get his licks in, first verbally, and then in a fistfight. He smiles as he raises his fists, saying he should’ve done this years ago to get it out of his system, and then as he swings at Jay, we cut to the next morning and Tim is left behind for the rest of this narrative about movie star Jay Kelly’s introspective journey through Italy. This whole sequence blends easygoing hangout charm with hostile emotions and honest confrontations. It’s thrilling and prickly. Too bad the rest of the movie doesn’t have the bite, or the honesty, or the tough confrontations, of this early scene. A movie made about Tim would likely be more interesting, but like the director in Jay and Tim’s shared past, the movie passes Tim over for the star Jay.

On a recent episode of Filmspotting, film critic Michael Philipps commented that he’s baffled that Noah Baumbach’s satiric instincts have abandoned him so precipitously in recent years. You can see the more prickly Baumbach in this aforementioned scene, but in the rest of Jay Kelly, he’s merely a shepherd of some mild confrontations and introspection that never really challenge Jay as a character, or us as the viewer. After this intriguing opening, Jay Kelly becomes a Hollywood variation of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957). We follow Clooney’s Jay on a trip to Europe where he’ll be honoured at a movie festival in Tuscany. With his entourage in tow, including his manager, Ron (Adam Sandler), and his publicist, Liz (Laura Dern), Jay reflects on his life—his first big break, his romantic relationships with women, his fraught relationships with his daughters over the years, and his artistic legacy.

Like in Wild Strawberries or Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Jay’s memories are externalized in Jay Kelly, as we watch the character literally observe his past play out before him. For instance, he’ll enter the new cabin on a train and find himself watching his younger self auditioning for a role. I appreciate that Baumbach wants to learn from the best in presenting this walk down memory lane, but there’s nothing challenging about what we witness in Jay Kelly’s past, especially compared to the more troubling Wild Strawberries. And in the present, the movie is so light, even fluffy.

Perhaps it’s the Italian setting that undoes the movie. As Jay leisurely moves through Italy, he’s bathed in golden light. He meets with friendly locals. He charms the people around him. We know he feels nothing inside, and that he’s driving Ron and Liz mad, but everything that is externalized seems like a vision from Under the Tuscan Sun (2003).

Or perhaps it’s George Clooney’s smile that undoes the movie, that perfect movie star smile with the crows feet at the edge of his eyes, the little twinkle that has served him so well over the years, made him a sex symbol for millions of women, a charming capital-M movie star to so many—a smile that is a bit too self-satisfied. Jay Kelly hangs the entire film on the enigma of that movie star smile, with the question of whether the mystery behind it actually hides some profound pain, profound depth, profound interest. But it doesn’t. It’s just a charming smile with a hint of mischievous fun. Jay’s past is not all that unique. It’s rather ordinary. His problems are mundane. His examination of them is rather straightforward.

Jay Kelly wants to deconstruct a movie star like Jay Kelly, but all we see when we watch him is George Clooney, the movie star with a wonderful life and a world of success. Baumbach, the director who was so enamoured of prickly characters and their internal conflicts in his early work, here seems to be as enamoured of Clooney as the rest of us. The satiric edge is gone, blinded by the white of Clooney’s enamels, the twinkle in his eyes, the tasteful salt-and-pepper of his hair.

Even though we watched two hours of Jay’s darkest secrets, the movie cannot help but marvel at the smile, the charm; his biggest problem seems to be that people assume he wants cheesecake everywhere he goes, since it’s in his rider, and the movie’s biggest breakthrough seems to be that he realizes it’s sometimes nice to eat the cheesecake instead of complain about it. Talk about weak sauce for a supposedly insightful deconstruction of Hollywood privilege.

5 out of 10

Jay Kelly (2025, UK/USA)

Directed by Noah Baumbach; written by Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer; starring George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Grace Edwards, Stacy Keach, Jim Broadbent, Patrick Wilson.

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