Clooney pays the titular star, just wrapping up his latest movie, a corny-looking thriller called Eight Men from Now. A multiple divorcee, he’s got two weeks before his next opus rolls, and he wants to spend it with younger daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards), only to discover she’s heading to Europe for the summer.
Then two things happen to give him pause for thought. Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), the director who gave him his big break as a young actor, dies. And, at the funeral, he meets Tim (Billy Crudup), an old acting class buddy.
As they catch up over a beer, it becomes clear Tim holds a grudge that Jay ‘stole’ his role at an audition way back when and they fight in the car park. The next day, and now sporting a black eye, Jay decides to ditch the new movie and fly to Paris to intercept Daisy.
And so he takes a private plane with his entourage, including long-time manager Ron (Adam Sandler) and publicist Liz (Laura Dern), as well as his hair stylist (Emily Mortimer) and other assorted hangers-on. His excuse? That he’s going to attend a career tribute in Tuscany, one he previously rejected.
The film’s central sequence, and its most amusing, sees Jay and his team on board a public train to Italy. With no first class, he has to sit with the “plebs”, as Stath Lets Flats’ Jamie Demetriou – one of the passengers – puts it. Amazed to see such a mega-star in the wild, they flock around him.
“When I see you, I see my whole life,” cries one man, delighted, like something out of Fellini’s 8½. Behind the scenes, Ron and Liz are trying to firefight an escalating situation, as Tim looks to sue Jay for the injuries he suffered in their bar fight.
Increasingly, Jay starts to reflect on his own life, especially his poor relationship with older daughter Jessica (Riley Keough). It doesn’t help when Ron’s other actor client Ben (Patrick Wilson) turns up to accept another tribute, with his lovely family in tow.
Nor when his “working stiff” father (Stacy Keach) arrives, gently berating his son where possible. By this point, though, Baumbach’s movie is starting to wallow in cliché, especially with Alba Rohrwacher’s over-the-top ‘Eye-talian’ handler.
At its best, Jay Kelly offers an understated performance from Sandler, reuniting here with Baumbach after 2017’s The Meyerowitz Stories. It’s a tender, heartfelt turn from Sandler, far removed from his comedic man-child schtick, as he plays a man who comes to realise he needs to support his own family (including his wife, played by Baumbach’s partner and Barbie co-writer Greta Gerwig), rather than devote his life to Kelly’s stardom.
As for Baumbach, this glossy first team-up with Clooney feels far removed from the edgy indies he made with Gerwig like Frances Ha and Mistress America. In some ways, it feels like a tribute to Clooney (see the concluding montage, featuring clips of Clooney in Syriana, Leatherheads, The Thin Red Line and others).
The trouble is, everyone knows Clooney’s life is not as empty as Jay Kelly’s; quite the opposite in fact. The desired effect, for us to feel for his character mid-crisis, never quite works.
Jay Kelly arrives on Netflix on 5th December 2025.
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