Jay Kelly (2025)
Sometimes you've got to stop and eat the cheesecake
Jay Kelly does not hide from its goal of a meta dissection of Hollywood stardom. “It’s like a movie where I’m playing myself,” our titular star, played by George Clooney, says at one point.
Jay Kelly attempts to say a lot of things about the film industry, about life and death, about imposter syndrome, family, parenthood, and more. It never digs deep enough on any one topic to garner the type of emotion director Noah Baumbach likely hoped to evoke. And that’s OK. Instead, we get a pleasant two hours spent with a couple of giant movie stars acting their asses off. It’s not rocket science, but it’s enjoyable.
Jay Kelly is an aging movie star, quite literally a clone of the man who plays him, and he’s having something of an end-of-career crisis. His youngest daughter is taking a trip to Europe ahead of college, his mentor — an old director who gave him his big break — has just died, and a run-in with an old friend and acting classmate, Timothy (Billy Crudup), ends in confrontation.
What follows is a man who has always been the center of the orbit wherever he goes heading off to Europe on a whim, dragging in his wake a sad and frantic crew of employees who are once again uprooting their own lives to serve at the pleasure of the star.
Among that crew are characters played by Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Emily Mortimer (who shares a co-writing credit with Baumbach, the first of her career), among others. Sandler’s Ron Sukenick is the ringleader, Kelly’s manager and seemingly best friend. As their unexpected adventure takes them on a public train (without first class), we get to know more about Ron’s relationship with Jay, as well as all he has to give up and juggle to be their for his top client. Ron has to spend time away from his wife (Greta Gerwig) and their two kids, once even leaving a championship father-daughter tennis match he’s playing in because of Jay’s whims.
We’ve seen Sandler put on his dramatic pants a time or two before but even next to Punch Drunk Love and Uncut Gems, this is Sandler at his absolute best. He’s constantly balancing that familiar Sandler anxiety with fits of anger, sadness, humor, and rage, and he delivers it all with gusto. Sandler will likely get an Academy Award nomination for this performance and it will be deserved, and if he walks away with his first career statuette you will see no complaints from me.
Wrangling Jay becomes akin to wrangling a cat, and it’s a familiar trope for a story about the world revolving around one larger-than-life star. It works because of the actors more than anything, and Baumbach’s and Mortimer’s script provide enough levity even in the serious moments to keep you smiling.
Throughout Jay’s journey he keeps stepping back into memories that shaped his life, including his acting class and that fateful audition that led to his dust-up with Timothy, as well as meetings with his eldest daughter, with whom his relationship is fraught.
The peeks into Jay’s world are interesting and integral to the story, but still don’t do enough to add the amount of emotional weight required to really care about what Jay is going through and the consequences of his actions.
What does work, among the multitude of messages Baumbach is trying to convey, is the idea of living in the moment. It’s a common theme but it works here. Jay Kelly is so consumed with stardom that he doesn’t have time to enjoy the small things he now regrets missing out on. The film’s climax really leans into that and it works.
Jay Kelly is a fun two hours with a litany of enjoyable characters. That it doesn’t carry the emotional weight of its story is OK, but at the very least it teaches us that sometimes you’ve got to stop and eat the cheesecake.