There's an appropriately wistful atmosphere to Noah Baumbach's rambling, occasionally grand Jay Kelly. To care about an uber-rich movie star (George Clooney) and his overworked, but privileged manager (Adam Sandler)... in this economy? Perhaps it's precisely because the film is so out of sync with the current mood that it becomes oddly appealing. At the New York Film Festival, it played like a brief salve out of a slate of more distressing, intricate and formally complicated pictures.
Clooney agnostics may struggle to connect with Jay Kelly, a self-absorbed performer, whose Sharpied-over gray hairs and ice-crackling-in-a-glass-of-bourbon charm, doesn't stray much from the actor's public persona. Before Clooney became the slick, classy, Oscar-winning movie star in the tradition of Cary Grant (name-checked, along with a slew of other icons), he was the heartthrob doc on ER, a juggernaut from the bygone era when millions watched the same TV episode at the same time. We learn little about Kelly's career, beyond its obvious financial success (perhaps, artistically dubious). The opening sequence, an impressively mounted peek at the busy, multifaceted efforts of a film crew upon a faux-Brooklyn soundstage, ends with Kelly giving a halting, dramatic monologue before his picture wrap. Variations of that sequence echo throughout the film.
In the present day storyline, Kelly is a solitary figure with no romantic partner, though he's constantly surrounded by people who rush and buzz around him. His closest relationship is with longtime manager, Ron (Sandler), though the two talk at each other more than with one another. It's like a marriage grown stale, their conversations running on separate melodic lines. His publicist, Liz (Laura Dern, in manic worrywart mode reminiscent of, but more redundant than her role in Is This Thing On?), is high strung and incessantly frazzled by every Kelly schedule change and slipup.
There's a relative emotional aloofness among his family as well. Kelly's youngest daughter (Grace Edwards) is beginning to forge a new path in her early twenties, off to travel the world. A scene between them at their backyard pool immediately recalls a key father-daughter moment from Alexander Payne's Clooney-starrer The Descendants (perhaps a coincidence, though Baumbach's film often seems to wear its cinematic references lovingly on its sleeve). Kelly is much less close to his eldest, Jessica (Riley Keough), a grade-school teacher who still carries the traumas of his long absences during her childhood. When he mentions traveling to Tuscany to receive a lifetime achievement award, no one seems eager to join him.
The death of a cherished director, Peter (Jim Broadbent), who gave Kelly his first big break, combined with a run-in with an old acting colleague, Timothy (Billy Crudup), cracks open a layer of long repressed introspection for Kelly. Flashbacks, with Charlie Rowe as the younger Kelly, unfold as if guided along by Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Past, with Kelly sometimes speaking aloud, even though no one can hear him. These moments underline his lingering loneliness.
The film drifts through multiple cinematic moods as it traverses from L.A. to Paris to Tuscany. It's a risky move that produces tonal unevenness, with some sections far more engaging than others. The beginning resembles a sunbaked L.A. satire of failed actors, cult directors, and smarmy, sunglassed therapists (Josh Hamilton plays Jessica's). An unexpected train ride to Paris, packed with the most whimsical assortment of characters imaginable, has the tone of a fizzy, madcap French comedy, complete with religious, Christ-complex iconography. The Tuscany stretch, featuring a perfectly-cast Stacy Keach as Kelly's father, nears the spinning atmosphere of Fellini (Jay Kelly sometimes reminds one of its more rigorous influences like Robert Altman's The Player, Fellini's 8 1/2 and Bob Fosse's showbiz fever nightmare All That Jazz).
With the exception of its killer, ironic final sequence, the comedy in Jay Kelly often feels strained. An unfunny gag about cheesecake runs throughout. And despite Sandler's genuinely affecting turn, his broadly-played scenes with his daughter and a distracting, miscast Greta Gerwig as his wife, designer sunglasses perched upon her head, feel unnecessary and undercooked (would his character be more mysterious if these scenes had been cut?).
The crafts, however, sometimes save the film from slipping into the abyss. Nicholas Britell's beautiful score is a highlight, smoothing out the film's jagged shifts and erraticism. Lush and old fashioned, it features a string motif that recalls Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade." Linus Sandgren's cinematography is equally rich and exquisite.
In post-2020 especially, there is ongoing discourse about the death of movies and the movie star. Jay Kelly, financed by Netflix and arriving in a particularly sluggish Hollywood year, especially for that elusive, midbudget adult drama, stirs a languid longing. Can a film be both corny and so ravishing and elegant at once? Those overstuffed 1960s Hollywood musicals and Jay Kelly fit that bill. ***
-Jeffery Berg
