Reviewed on 28th August at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival – In Competition, 132 Mins.
Cast: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Isla Fisher, Billy Crudup
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Director: Noah Baumbach
In Irish Cinemas: 21st November 2025
On Netflix: 5th December 2025
What makes someone a movie star? Technically, it’s just a person who becomes famous by appearing in films. But that definition barely scratches the surface. A true movie star absorbs the fantasies and longings of legions of strangers, becoming a kind of mirror — or even a blank surface onto which audiences project their own private desires.
This raises a different set of questions: What sort of person seeks that kind of life? Who actually thrives under its glare? And what does it do to the interior world of the individual at the centre of all that scrutiny?
These are the tensions running through the new film “Jay Kelly,” which examines the psychological costs of celebrity with remarkable tenderness. Its most outstanding achievement may be that it explores the vanity and vulnerability of stardom without ever slipping into the very narcissism it critiques.
Directed by Noah Baumbach and co-written with Emily Mortimer, the film insists on the messy, complicated humanity of its protagonist. Even as it chronicles the strange choreography of a life lived under constant supervision, manager, publicist, security detail always in orbit, it keeps its focus trained on the man at the centre.
The choice to cast George Clooney as Jay Kelly is inspired. Clooney’s long-established screen persona, suave but fallible, charismatic but self-questioning, provides the perfect frame for a character who has spent decades on the pedestal of fame. Here, Clooney blends the slapstick agility of his Coen brothers performances with the brooding introspection of Michael Clayton, arriving at something both new and quietly reflective of his own career trajectory. It feels like a role he’s been moving toward for years.
At the start, Jay has a rare stretch of free time and hopes to spend it with his younger daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), before she heads to college. Daisy, however, would prefer a European trip with her friends. Bruised but determined, Jay pushes his exhausted manager, Ron (Adam Sandler), to resurrect an invitation he’d previously declined: a lifetime-achievement-style tribute at a Tuscan film festival. Soon enough, Jay and his entourage are Italy-bound.
Sandler, as Ron, gives one of his deft hybrid performances: half weary straight man, half emotional anchor, blending the gentleness of his comedic roles with the wounded sincerity of his dramatic ones. Meanwhile, Laura Dern, as Jay’s fed-up publicist Liz, brings a sharp, unsentimental wit that cuts cleanly through Jay’s self-pity.
As Jay drifts across Europe and through his own memories, the film becomes a mosaic of brief encounters. Cameos and minor roles flicker through the narrative: Jim Broadbent as the director who launched Jay’s career (a figure partly reminiscent of Peter Bogdanovich), and appearances from Alba Rohrwacher, Josh Hamilton, Patrick Wilson, Isla Fisher, Stacy Keach, Greta Gerwig, and Baumbach himself.
A standout moment comes from Billy Crudup, who appears for only a heartbeat as a once-promising actor who never reached Jay’s heights. Their reunion spirals into a raw, rueful confession that rattles Jay deeply, with Crudup delivering a hilariously, heartbreakingly impassioned reading of a restaurant menu that becomes an unexpected emotional crescendo.
Baumbach’s trademark eye for behavioural nuance is on full display. Still, in recent years, from Marriage Story to White Noise to the surprise pop juggernaut Barbie, his filmmaking has expanded in scale and ambition. Jay Kelly reflects this evolution: the film is intimate yet grand, character-driven yet visually exuberant.
He choreographs dialogue scenes with a rhythmic, almost musical precision. A sweeping early shot that circles a bustling movie set, and a tense, tightly staged sequence aboard a crowded train from France to Italy, showcase how Baumbach can take talk-heavy scenes and infuse them with vibrant cinematic movement.
But he also knows when to quiet the room. A phone call between Jay and his estranged older daughter Jessica (Riley Keough) is staged with the two actors walking side by side, their physical proximity sharpening the emotional distance between them. It’s a simple idea executed to devastating effect.
The film culminates with Jay, stripped of his bravado, accepting his tribute award. The reel played in his honour is made of real George Clooney film clips, a meta gesture that somehow lands with sincerity rather than cleverness. Watching Clooney’s Jay take in footage from Clooney’s own career becomes strangely moving, less a trick of self-reference and more a moment of honest reckoning.
By the end, Baumbach and Clooney have shaped a portrait of a man confronting his past, realising the limits of redemption, and still choosing to step forward. Jay Kelly, the character, is a work in progress. “Jay Kelly”, the film arrives fully formed, bold, compassionate, and quietly astonishing.
Overall: 6.5/10
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