Jay Kelly

Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly Review: The Cost of a Fading Stardom

I have only seen a handful of Noah Baumbach's films—The Squid and the Whale, Marriage Story, and While We're Young. I’ve noticed that his films all carry strong autobiographical touches, especially The Squid and the Whale and Marriage Story, which deal directly with his parents' divorce and his own. As a result, the performances and settings always feel incredibly authentic.

Baumbach easily attracts A-list talent like Scarlett Johansson, Ben Stiller, Laura Dern, and Adam Driver—whom Baumbach cast early in his career and who has continued to collaborate with the director as his stardom rose. Yet, the stories and characters are never outshone by these massive names. In Jay Kelly, however, Baumbach turns his lens toward megastardom itself. For a project of this nature, he teamed up with a perfectly cast George Clooney. Clooney is a superstar who, like his character, immediately dominates a room with his presence—though the real-life actor is famously much more humble about using his celebrity to do good in the world than his narcissistic on-screen counterpart.

Spoilers below:

Clooney frequently plays against his own stardom, often taking on character parts where he is in over his head, even when leading films like Michael Clayton and The Descendants. In The Ides of March (which he also directed), he was brilliantly cast as a presidential candidate hiding a dark secret. In Good Night, and Good Luck. and Syriana, he took unshowy roles in deeply important films, earning an Academy Award for Supporting Actor for the latter and a Best Director nod for the former. Conversely, when he plays a traditional leading man—such as in the Ocean’s franchise—I find myself less invested. Despite the elaborate heists, those characters often feel like they are simply coasting on charm.

In Jay Kelly, the titular character undergoes a painful journey as his egocentric behavior gradually costs him his closest relationships while approaching a career tribute in Tuscany. Jay experiences numerous flashbacks, all highlighting selfish choices that eventually sabotage his future connections—like turning down a critical favor for the director who discovered him, or walking out of a therapy session his daughter arranged to save their bond. Baumbach stages these as surreal sequences where Jay steps into a different setting to watch his past self. Despite these reflections, Jay continues his selfish behavior until fate punishes him for turning his back on a part Ron worked tirelessly to get him. Immediately afterward, his world crumbles: his father leaves, fellow actor Ben Alcock (played sheepishly by Patrick Wilson) turns up with several vehicles worth of supportive family, his daughter cuts ties, and Ron begins to walk away.

Clooney—a celebrity who frequently champions the less fortunate (even executing both film and stage versions of Good Night, and Good Luck.)—clearly has fun playing a vain jerk trying to skate by on charm. A prime example is when he walks into a train car to see his daughter, fully expecting the passengers to be just as awed by his presence as the crowd was earlier. Yet, his treatment of his team, particularly Ron, is terrible. He rarely listens—walking right past Ron as his manager tries to talk about his own family crises—and casually forces his crew on a last-minute trip to Europe with zero regard for uprooting their lives.

Clooney makes an intriguing acting choice here. When I first saw him in From Dusk Till Dawn (I never watched ER, though I may get to it since I am really enjoying his new series The Pitt), I instantly noticed his commanding, even voice. A huge part of the joy in a Clooney movie comes from hearing him deliver dialogue, but here, he drops his voice a few registers. Jay is older and visibly worn down. Clooney's performance in the final scene is deeply moving: instead of watching his career highlights, he begins to remember watching his daughters put on a sketch for him, but this time his memory changes the ending so he stays to see the whole piece. The scene has a beautifully surreal edge to it; because the two daughters are far enough apart in age, they never actually would have been in a childhood sketch together as they appear here. The sequence functions as a distorted, dreamlike construction of Jay's guilty conscience rather than a literal memory. An audience member might assume he is teary-eyed over his cinematic legacy, but he only genuinely cares about the real life he missed because of it. His final line beautifully mirrors the opening four-minute single-take of the film. He could still have a good life ahead, but he has likely lost his chance at closeness with his older daughter. The younger one still seems to love him, even if he is no longer her priority.

For me, the ultimate joy of the film is Adam Sandler’s performance. Sandler possesses incredible depth and a brilliant dramatic toolkit, making it frustrating for film fans when he spends years making movies that don't challenge him. Whenever he collaborates with a top-tier auteur—like in Uncut Gems or Spanglish—he always rises to the occasion. In Jay Kelly, Sandler delivers an incredibly honest portrait of a man caught between two worlds. He has achieved immense professional success managing a global superstar, but it has exacted a steep toll on his personal life. He desperately tries to be the devoted family man that Jay never was, but his professional obligations constantly drag him away, leaving him terrified of losing his connection to his family. Ron’s wife, Lois, is played by Baumbach’s wife, Greta Gerwig, in a typically dry performance that I wish we had seen more of. Ron constantly needs to hear that his family loves him because he sees Jay's isolation and the thought petrifies him.

Sandler is just as massive a star in his own sandbox as Clooney is in his, yet Sandler retains an "everyman" quality that makes it easy to accept Ron in a subservient role to Jay—even though we get distinct hints that Ron is a total shark when dealing with external clients. By the close of the film, even though Ron has left Jay (though you get the sense Jay might still charm him into staying), Ron clearly has the industry muscle to land high-profile clients who hopefully won't take him for granted.

One of Sandler’s most compelling scenes happens when Ron meets with Ben Alcock. The scene reminded me of a dinner I attended several years ago with an old friend. When I arrived, my friend was on the phone and stayed on it for ten minutes, later taking two more calls while we were hanging out. Similarly, Ron arrives entirely distracted by a phone deal for Jay, failing to give Ben his full attention until Ben explicitly brings up their relationship. It becomes clear that while Ron has been an excellent agent to Ben, Ben doesn't feel valued on a personal level—a direct parallel to how Jay treats Ron.

Laura Dern, who won an Academy Award for playing a ruthless divorce attorney in Baumbach's Marriage Story, plays Liz, Jay’s long-suffering publicist. Liz is at her wit's end. Jay’s sudden European flight to chase his daughter—the first of many people to voluntarily distance themselves from him—forces Liz and Ron to drop everything and leave without notice. It is the straw that breaks the camel's back. We also learn that managing Jay ultimately cost Ron and Liz a romantic future together, beautifully revealed halfway through the film during a scene by the train tracks. Sandler delivers his line about the ring hidden in the ganache with profound sadness, but completely devoid of pathetic pining. They have both moved on, but the sense of mutual loss lingers.

Finally, Billy Crudup turns in a great performance as Timothy, Jay’s old friend who represents the more typical actor experience: someone who tried to make it, failed, and moved on. He bitterly blames Jay for stealing his star-making role years ago. However, the film reveals that Timothy, despite being a technically skilled actor, simply botched his audition. Jay took Timothy's script edits, gave the role his own spin, and performed it with far more confidence. If Jay had not landed the part, someone else would have; it was never going to be Timothy, making the latter's deep-seated blame partially misplaced.

Jim Broadbent is at his grandfatherly best as Peter, the director who gave Jay his first big break. Grace Edwards plays Kelly’s younger daughter in a humorous yet understated performance. She is kind to her dad but refuses to be taken for granted or live by his rigid agenda. Despite this, the film's ending leaves us feeling optimistic about their relationship—provided Jay can keep himself together.

Meanwhile, Riley Keough plays Jay’s older daughter, Daisy. She shares a brilliant, surreal scene with Jay in a forest; though she is actually just on the phone with him, staging them side-by-side perfectly visually reinforces the idea that Jay is literally and figuratively "lost in the woods." Having suffered much more from her father's chronic absence, Daisy has tried to rebuild their bond but has ultimately come to terms with his narcissistic personality. Jay takes entirely the wrong tact in this scene: instead of listening to and trying to understand his daughter’s pain, he clumsily explains his own behavior, even if he doesn't explicitly defend it.

Lastly, Stacy Keach plays Jay’s working-class father, a man wholly unimpressed by the sheer artificiality of his son's celebrity. Keach delivers a colorful performance—a massive departure from the role I most associate him with, the principled prison warden in Prison Break. That said, I didn't quite buy the narrative logic of him abruptly leaving before the tribute after traveling all the way to Italy, simply due to a minor health scare. If he was physically fit enough to travel all the way back home, he was certainly healthy enough to sit through the ceremony. While I understand Baumbach's goal was to maximize Jay's sudden isolation, the plot device felt forced, even if it was effectively accentuated by Jay running into Ben Alcock and his three vehicles worth of supportive family.

The film’s primary “action scene,” in which Jay tries to rehab his public image by chasing down a purse-snatcher on a train, leans heavily into comedy. Jay seems to actively play into his on-screen action-hero persona just to impress the passengers who recognize him. The chase itself is highly reminiscent of Clooney’s awkward, flat-footed sprint to his sister-in-law’s house in The Descendants—he looks silly rather than heroic. Still, the cinematography by Linus Sandgren is spectacular as we watch Jay barrel through tall blades of grass. I expected him to be entirely winded chasing a younger man, but he manages to out-wrestle the thief and recover the purse. Ultimately, Jay finds little triumph in the victory once he realizes the thief suffers from a mental illness. In a sharp editing choice, Baumbach cuts to Jay's younger daughter in a completely different part of the train during the chaos, casually playing cards and entirely oblivious to her father's desperate antics.

Later, a pivotal dancing scene is presented in a tight, claustrophobic close-up. By framing Jay closely as he tries to escape his increasingly confusing reality—while entirely ignoring Ron’s pleas—Baumbach avoids making the dancing look either perfectly coordinated or comically awkward. This tight focus keeps the audience locked into Jay's internal breakdown rather than the spectacle of the dance.

Baumbach effectively presents Jay Kelly as one of the very last true movie stars, emphasizing this fading legacy through massive physical posters and meta-discussions about Kelly’s vanishing place in modern society. Nicholas Britell’s magnificent score feels beautifully old-fashioned, a tone matched by the vintage typesetting of the film's title cards.

Ultimately, Jay Kelly is a beautifully textured, observant story about the steep cost of global fame and the vital, exhausting need to nurture the human relationships right in front of us.

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