“Jay Kelly” Reminds Us Why George Clooney is a Movie Star
How does a movie star reckon with their legacy? Such is the question at the heart of Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, which introduces Jay (George Clooney) as he’s wrapping his latest film. He’s a movie star in the truest sense, with a megawatt smile, an easygoing sensibility, and the aloofness that comes from being sheltered from the real world by fame. Always at his side is his longtime manager, Ron (Adam Sandler), who abandons his family for Jay at the drop of a hat. When Jay decides to follow his teenage daughter (Grace Edwards) to Europe, desperate to spend time with her before she goes to college, he expects Ron to be there too. The trip isn’t the family bonding experience Jay thought it would be, and it forces him to face his life, his career, and his regrets.
Baumbach is at his best when he plunges into the ugliness of people. Not the downright evil of the ones who become dictators, but the people who think they’re good. The ones who think they’re trying their best, despite knowing deep down that they’re making bad choices. It’s the DNA of Baumbach’s filmography going back to Squid and the Whale. This is the simpleness of a man who realizes he might be a movie star to the world, but he’s not even a father to his children. And so what do his movies mean now? Do they matter? Does any accolade matter? Movies are everything, nothing, and all the space in between. They’re meaningless. They’re what makes the world go round. They teach us bad habits, and good ones too. Movies are a fundamental mistake in the universe, only possible because of a failure of our own design, a shortcoming of the human eye. Yet thousands of people dedicate their lives to movies, and that creates meaning.
Cr. Peter Mountain/Netflix © 2025.
Jay Kelly opens with a quote from Sylvia Plath: “It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.” Jay Kelly is both somebody else and nobody at all. The Jay Kelly who stepped off the bus in LA from a Midwest town was buried the day he landed his first big role. What remains is a pliable vessel that can be filled any way it needs to be for the role presented to him. As obsessed as he is with his image, Jay Kelly has no sense of self. At home, at work, on set, he’s looking to someone else for validation, unable to find it within himself. Without an internal compass, Jay is adrift in Hollywood. He’s a ship guided from movie to movie, exuding charm wherever he goes. People who meet him will say he’s nice, but will realize there’s not much else under that gleaming smile.
Cr. Peter Mountain/Netflix © 2025.
Jay Kelly is a reminder of why George Clooney is George Clooney. It’s a career-defining performance in a career that has already been so well-defined, yet it feels like Clooney is looking down a barrel saying, “I’m just getting started.” And Clooney is surrounded by a whip-smart ensemble. Sandler plays wonderfully against type as Ron, offering a beaten-down manager who doesn’t understand his place in the lives of the people around him. Greta Gerwig flexes her dry comedic timing as Ron’s wife who handles every pressing emergency at home, including their daughter’s swelling feet and their son’s questions about ghosts. Laura Dern returns to the world of Baumbach as the ever-frazzled, distinctly impatient business partner to Ron. The list of supporting characters could go on forever, but not in a way that ever takes the spotlight from Clooney or Sandler. Jay Kelly is about them, their relationship over the years, and how it has shifted through time. Jay Kelly the movie star is the product of both Jay and Ron, but neither knows how to reckon with that.
Jay Kelly is the sort of movie that the Hollywood crowd will love. It celebrates the back-breaking business and the glamour of it all, but Baumback and Emily Mortimer’s script doesn’t let this life come across as all sunshine and roses. There’s a deep well of sadness in Jay Kelly the character. It’s a well that we see him come across in the film, seemingly for the first time, because he’s spent the last thirty years running as fast as he can to avoid reality. Jay Kelly is more about realizing you’ve grown up than it is about the industry of Hollywood. It’s admitting that most of your days are now behind you and figuring out what to do with the time you have left. Jay Kelly is a mournful, humorous reflection of life and the fact that, try as we might, we cannot have a do-over.
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