Jay Kelly: ‘deeply mischievous’ Hollywood satire starring George Clooney

It’s impossible to miss the similarities between George Clooney and his character in this terrific new film from Noah Baumbach, said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph.

Jay Kelly is a “silvery film star in his early 60s who is recognised everywhere he goes”, and often accused of playing versions of himself. Jay Kelly looks like Clooney, he acts like Clooney, and the clips we see of his films are from Clooney’s own. Where do the parallels end?

It is hard to say, because even Kelly isn’t quite Jay Kelly. Having been in the business for 35 years, he is now realising that “‘Jay Kelly’ is an abstract concept: a face on a poster, a star on a screen, a name on a brand endorsement”. Being him is a 24/7 job, and requires him, and his large entourage, to make sacrifices to keep the show afloat.

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Smartly scripted by Baumbach and Emily Mortimer, this identity-crisis story is “deeply mischievous” and “deeply wise”.

The writers cleverly move the focus away from Kelly’s angst about his $20 million paycheques, said Kevin Maher in The Times, to focus instead on his regrets about his flaws as a father. Following the death of the director who gave him his break, Kelly flies to Europe to accept an award and gatecrash his teenage daughter’s travels.

Baumbach “is usually a pin-sharp comic dramatist”, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. This, however, is a “soft, Fellini-like satire”, packed with industry in-jokes.

Adam Sandler and Laura Dern are both very good, as Kelly’s manager and publicist respectively; but the film tends to the “twee” (watch out for “zany” scenes on the European train trip) and “nurses a surprising sourness” about Hollywood outsiders. The performances make the film watchable, but the big idea of the “meta resemblance” ultimately feels a bit wasted.