In Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” George Clooney plays a movie star who might as well be stamped from his own marquee image. The biography tracks, sure, but it’s the vibe that really overlaps: the unflappable charm, the quick wit that makes a room lean in, the geniality that reads as authentic even when the camera dares you to question it. The film keeps nudging us to ask whether that warmth is the man or the mask—and whether the difference even matters when you’ve spent three decades selling a version of yourself to the world.
Baumbach opens on a set, with Jay pushing through the last moments of a death scene and casually asking for another take—not as a tantrum, but as a professional itch. He wants it right. His circle reads that differently. Around him orbit the exhausted loyalists: Ron (Adam Sandler), the longtime manager who has turned cheerleading into an art; Liz (Laura Dern), a publicist sharp enough to cut glass; and a coterie of assistants who’ve learned to tidy up his wake. Jay is no on-set tyrant, but he is a sovereign, and the job of everyone nearby is to keep the kingdom humming while the king remains affable.
The soft underbelly shows when he’s with his younger daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), who is days away from leaving for Johns Hopkins. He doesn’t want her to go; the looming quiet terrifies him. Grief also shadows him: his old British friend and co-star Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent) has just died, and a gauzy flashback finds the two cooking in Jay’s cavernous Los Angeles home, trading memories of the film that made them—“Cranberry Street.” Peter needs a hand getting a new project off the ground; Jay demurs. Career calculus comes first.
Baumbach, co-writing with Emily Mortimer, settles back into a mode that suits him: a talky, tart, inside-Hollywood hangout with an observational kick. The filmmaking is smooth and the gossip is tasty, but when compared to the eviscerating clarity of “Marriage Story,” this one feels friendlier to its subject. Clooney deconstructs his own aura with finesse, yet the film often cushions the fallout. It peers into the machinery of stardom without wanting to gum up the works.
The film’s most volatile spark arrives at a funeral, where an old classmate, Timothy (Billy Crudup, smiling like he’s bracing for impact), sidles up and unloads years of resentment. Back then, Timothy brought Jay along to an audition; Jay landed the part; Timothy’s career cratered. Baumbach doesn’t keep it apocryphal—he stages the memory: Timothy shakes himself to pieces; Jay asks to read; Jay nails it. Depending on your temperament, this sequence either indicts Jay’s opportunism or absolves him with due process. I felt the latter. The blame slides off the movie star like rain off a freshly waxed car.
There’s some of gratifyingly blunt and raw material here. Content collapsed. The scenes with Jay’s older daughter Jessica (Riley Keough)—including a mortifying therapy session where a charlatan clinician reads a “Dear Dad” letter aloud—aim to puncture the myth. We’re told, not shown, that Jay was an absentee father, and Clooney’s default warmth makes the accusation harder to absorb. You can sense the film wanting to drill into the rot of celebrity-enabled selfishness, but it keeps hitting plywood rather than load-bearing beams.
So Jay runs. Instead of beginning the next prestige job, he hops a plane to Europe to tail Daisy on a rail drift from Paris to Italy, a trip that doubles as a prelude to a lifetime-achievement tribute in Tuscany—one he has previously waved off for fear of sounding the retirement bell. The mid-section plays like featherweight dad-and-daughter travelogue: train cars, café counters, Jay being delightfully normal with strangers, and a comic detour involving a purse snatch that lets him be a hero without scuffing the tux. It’s agreeable fun, and Baumbach’s dialogue still crackles, but the itinerary rarely detours into territory that might leave a bruise.
Back stateside in spirit if not in mileage, the film’s heartbeat belongs to Sandler’s Ron, whose weary grin and quiet triage work suggest decades spent translating Jay’s whims into manageable messes. Ron is also shepherding a counter-Jay, Ben Alcock (Patrick Wilson), a dutiful family man and TV star who represents the path not taken. Their Tuscan tributes, laid back-to-back, play like a study in brand management versus actual intimacy. A late appearance by Jay’s father (Stacy Keach), who arrives only to ghost the ceremony, strains credibility while underlining the theme in Sharpie.
Baumbach ends with a montage of Jay’s “career,” cheekily built from Clooney’s own filmography. It’s clever and disarming, and it underlines the central gamble: if you cast George Clooney as a George Clooney-like star and ask him to interrogate his reflection, how harsh can the questions really be when the reflection keeps smiling back?
There’s nothing overtly dislikable about the film, and there are a handful of scenes that are beautifully written, acted, and directed. Baumbach still knows how to craft a charged two-hander and how to pace a scene so the last line lands with a perfectly timed thud. But Jay Kelly feels more sentimental than truly thoughtful. In the end, the movie gives its subject exactly what Jay gives almost everyone he meets: charm, consideration, and a gentle exit line—when what it needed, at least once, was the courage to let the mask slip and stay off.