“All my life are movies,” bemoans George Clooney’s aging superstar Jay Kelly, a confession that hints at something deeper, and unfortunately, something far more predictable. The film comes from writer-director Noah Baumbach, the mind behind cultural gems like “Marriage Story” and “The Squid and the Whale,” yet “Jay Kelly,” co-written with Emily Mortimer, feels shockingly inept. It’s a Hollywood story slathered in schmaltz, complete with Adam Sandler playing a frazzled manager who calls everyone “puppy” for reasons that remain as unexplained as they are unfunny.
What we get is a one-trick pony stretched into an insufferable slog about an A-lister reflecting on his career and his failures as a father. Jay wants to make amends and be the thoughtful, loving dad he pretended to be on screen. On paper, that’s material Baumbach could spin into something knotty and compelling. Instead, “Jay Kelly” never finds a rhythm. It shuffles in a grab bag of half-baked character archetypes—Sandler’s wound-up manager, Laura Dern essentially reprising her “Marriage Story” lawyer, Stacy Keach as the impenetrable father figure—then ladles on celebrity-navel-gazing instead of pulling back on the Lifetime-movie clichés. Billy Crudup even appears for a single, bewildering scene to accuse Jay of stealing his life before the two suddenly start swinging fists. Who could’ve guessed?
The movie plods along as Jay bounces from Los Angeles to Paris to Tuscany, with occasional flashbacks reminding us that he stumbled into stardom by being in the right place at the right time. The film wants to reveal the emptiness of being a massive celebrity, but I’m fairly certain most people already understand fame isn’t a spiritual wonderland. It all plays like personal therapy for Clooney, which is great for him, less so for the audience.
“Jay Kelly” juggles so many threads that none of them land: Jay’s guilt over being an absent father (he’s estranged from his eldest daughter, played by Riley Keough); a pointless subplot involving Sandler and Dern; and a thankless role for Greta Gerwig as Sandler’s perpetually irritated wife whose entire function is to call and complain. Meanwhile, Jay wanders around trying to figure out who his real friends are and who are just cashing checks, but I never cared enough about anyone on screen for the question to matter.
At least the Italian countryside provides a pleasant distraction from the parade of random characters Jay meets while chasing down his teenage daughter on her European backpacking trip. The film even halts for a bizarre detour where a purse is snatched on a train and Jay, suddenly channeling his Batman days, sprints through a wheat field to catch the thief. Sure. Why not?
Clooney is perfectly fine doing the Clooney performance he’s done for years, and Sandler turns in a softer, more subdued version of himself. But the two massive stars create a strange imbalance that the film never resolves. Baumbach clearly wants this to be a two-hander, but the pairing never gels. A few scenes hint at a more controlled, less chaotic version of this film that might’ve worked, but any spark gets lost beneath the self-satirizing impulses—especially when shows like “The Studio” have already perfected this Hollywood-lampooning formula.
Ultimately, “Jay Kelly” feels like the kind of overindulgent Oscar bait that a fictional studio exec might fall asleep to in a screening room. Every so often, Clooney’s charm cuts through, but once you look past the movie-star sheen, the film reveals a hollow core. For all its talk about sacrifice—professional, personal, or otherwise—“Jay Kelly” never makes you care about the journey, or the man taking it.
JAY KELLY streams on Netflix Friday, December 5th.