<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It\u2019s much easier to be somebody else or nobody else at all,\u201d reads the opening title card of <\/span>Jay Kelly<\/span><\/i>, quoting Sylvia Plath\u2019s journals.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s all spelled out, right there in the first few seconds: <\/span>Jay Kelly<\/span><\/i> is about the man who everyone knows as the famous actor Jay Kelly, although Jay Kelly doesn\u2019t seem to know who he really is underneath his Jay Kelly veneer. But the strange thing about <\/span>Jay Kelly<\/span><\/i> is that\u2014though it seems to be a mirror for the star playing Kelly, George Clooney\u2014this actor isn\u2019t a stand-in for his real-life counterpart at all (despite featuring in a montage of real Clooney roles).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Noah Baumbach\u2019s film follows Kelly as he tries to navigate his late career anxieties and fears of being a deadbeat dad, not just to the adult daughter he already let down, but to his youngest who is about to go away to college. He has fraught relationships with everyone, from his daughters to his manager\/best friend Ron (Adam Sandler). He pushes them further away the more he tries to break down his \u201cJay Kelly\u201d persona (which is what alienated them in the first place), all while he tries to find the real man underneath.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It is easy for anyone that knows him personally to take a stab at Kelly. He stopped being human to become a movie star. As Kelly journeys across France and Italy to attend a celebration of his work but also attempt to self-righteously reconnect with his youngest daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards), Kelly steps into flashbacks of the younger, pre-fame Kelly, from his early betrayals to his first loves. These moments are tinged in their own sadnesses as much as they are absorbed nostalgically by Kelly, as if he is watching the movie of his own life\u2014ostensibly tragic, but something he can\u2019t help but fall in love with.<\/span><\/p>\n While his climb to the top pains all involved, Baumbach plays <\/span>Jay Kelly<\/span><\/i> as a self-deprecating comedy. Anytime Kelly tries to tell Daisy that he spends most of his time alone, his security man will come up behind him and hand him a beverage. It\u2019s a pointed tension that Baumbach derives all his laughs from, but there is another tension underlying the whole project that is less funny or sad. Just odd. This tension is found between how much of the film is seemingly about Clooney\u2019s character being at odds with the Clooney persona itself, while in actuality being a deconstruction of its filmmaker. It is no mistake that the opening, <\/span>The Player<\/span><\/i>-esque oner on a movie set, which culminates in a demonstration of Kelly\u2019s talents, is really a show-off move by the director.<\/span><\/p>\n Every moment of <\/span>Jay Kelly<\/span><\/i> lives between the textual (the internal conflict of the fictional actor) and the metatextual (what the story tells us about the real creative forces behind the film). The flashbacks call to mind Bob Fosse\u2019s self-critiques in <\/span>All That Jazz<\/span><\/i><\/a>, or Federico Fellini analyzing his own romantic buffoonery and artistic impotence in <\/span>8\u00bd<\/span><\/i>. Both those works are explicitly about the filmmakers behind them, where the stars play versions of the directors themselves. Here, <\/span>Jay Kelly<\/span><\/i> is a half-step between Clooney and Baumbach, too far from both to be directly truthful about either.<\/span><\/p>\n In this way, <\/span>Jay Kelly<\/span><\/i> is in line with Baumbach\u2019s previous films, where the lead is a kind of Baumbach stand-in (Adam Driver in <\/span>White Noise<\/span><\/i><\/a>, Ben Stiller in <\/span>While We\u2019re Young<\/span><\/i><\/a>), although with Kelly being a particularly hyper-inflated self-flagellation as Clooney\u2019s star power maximizes the film\u2019s egoistic comedy. This approach\u2014using somebody in a similar but not quite the same line of artistry to stand in for oneself, like following a music composer in Lucchino Visconti\u2019s <\/span>Death In Venice<\/span><\/i> (the deathly make-up sequence from which is referenced towards the end of <\/span>Kelly<\/span><\/i>)\u2014can work, but only if the portrait is still willing to be guttingly honest with itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, Baumbach transposes bits of his own life here, but from much more distance than his searingly personal <\/span>Marriage Story<\/span><\/i><\/a>: An early mentor figure wears a signature neckerchief, clearly in reference to the late Peter Bogdanovich, who played a major role in Baumbach\u2019s second feature <\/span>Highball<\/span><\/i><\/a>. The fiction implies there is some personal regret towards that eternally ended relationship, but is that really the case? Rather, Baumbach seems to be using this film to speculate on his own fears around his capabilities to let people down.<\/span><\/p>\n This is best embodied by Billy Crudup\u2019s character Timothy, an old acting school friend who resents Kelly for stealing the career that he believes was rightfully his (and also, bizarrely, has his hair styled like Baumbach). Is this moment of self-reflection taken from a literal instance in Baumbach\u2019s life? Is he showing regret for his success compared to the troubles that <\/span>Whit Stillman<\/span><\/a>\u2014his clearest cinematic forefather\u2014has subsequently had, in the same way he thinly veiled Adam Driver\u2019s character in <\/span>While We\u2019re Young <\/span><\/i>as a patronizing version of Joe Swanberg?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n These questions only really remind audiences that Jay Kelly isn\u2019t really a character\u2014just a series of reactions. It\u2019s impossible for Kelly to know himself because Kelly isn\u2019t written that way. Even the past-tense version of him, the aspiring actor, is little more than a thin, trite concept. He is a blank slate to project ideas and feelings onto, one which hijacks Clooney\u2019s face and charisma to retell the same arc of mild personal penitence that steered Baumbach\u2019s films for the last decade. The thing they have most in common is that, like Baumbach, Kelly always asks for another take.<\/span><\/p>\n Director:<\/b> Noah Baumbach<\/span>
Writer: <\/b>Noah Baumbach, Emily Mortimer<\/span>
Starring: <\/b>George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Grace Edwards, Stacy Keach, Jim Broadbent, Patrick Wilson, Eve Hewson, Greta Gerwig, Alba Rohrwacher, Josh Hamilton, Lenny Henry, Emily Mortimer, Nic\u00f4le Lecky, Thaddea Graham, Isla Fisher<\/span>
Release Date:<\/b> November 14, 2025; December 5, 2025 (Netflix)<\/span><\/p>\n