PREMISE
After being selected to receive a lifetime achievement award, famous movie actor Jay Kelly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager, Ron.
THE GOOD STUFF
CLOONEY- There are some George Clooney roles where you can tell that he knows that he can coast off of movie star swag and talent, and it doesn’t have to put in the extra effort. There are also George Clooney roles where you know he’s pushing it to his red line, and Jay Kelly is one of those performances. As many will point out, there are many different dynamics between the character of Jay Kelly and Clooney himself, and you can tell that Clooney’s goal is to stick the point home on what kind of sacrifices Jay Kelly (I.E., Clooney) had to make to achieve the kind of success that he has. Even in this movie, a character points out to Jay Kelly that he plays himself in every single role. Clooney is doing that here, but in a meta sort of way. And he’s excellent.
For some reason, Clooney has always had a knack for playing fathers and father figures. In my opinion, outside of O brother, where art thou? All of his truly great performances are those of embittered father figures, and this is no different.
SANDLER- This film distinctively points out that for every George Clooney/Jay Kelly-size movie star out there, there is a team of people sacrificing large amounts of time to make sure the brand is intact. Adam Sandler plays the performance meant to represent those individuals, and in a lot of ways… He’s the more interesting character, and Sandler knocks it out of the park, AS HE HAS DONE WITH EVERY SINGLE DRAMATIC ROLE HE HAS EVER HAD. In the last 20 minutes of this movie, Sandler is hitting nothing but home runs. It would be really nice to see Sandler get some supporting Oscar cred for this, given that the performance is that good, but at this point, he’s been outright robbed of like three nominations so that I won’t hold my breath.
NOAH BAUMBACH- Kicking and screaming, Life aquatic with Steve zissou, squid AND the WHALE, MargoT at the wedding, THE fantastic Mr fox, Frances ha, markowitz stories, marriage story, and co-writing barbie. That’s not even his full screenwriting resume, but I do want to highlight those films to ask a fundamental question: Should Noah Baumbach be up there with Aaron Sorkin, Woody Allen, and the Coen Brothers when it comes to scriptwriting? Just because he isn’t as revered doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve credit in the same fashion as those men do. Jay Kelly isn’t some masterpiece or anything like that, but it is very much a Noah Baumbach script. And as time passes, those words tend to mean a sure thing when it comes to the quality of a movie. At least to guys like me, anyway.
THE BAD STUFF
THE COLLATERAL DAMAGE- It is regularly mentioned throughout this film that the glorious career of Jay Kelly has caused a lot of collateral damage. Collateral damage not only to Kelly himself, but to the team that has always surrounded and supported him. We get brief glimpses into the lives of the Adam Sandler and Laura Dern characters. It’s not brief enough to be forgettable either. They both have distinctive reasons for being there, and in the case of Adam Sandler’s character, he has a loving and supportive family that knows why he has to whisk off to the corners of the world to be next to Jay. It’s the collateral damage of the Jay Kelly enterprise that is the most fascinating thing about this movie, and it isn’t covered nearly enough. This would be a way more fascinating movie if Jay Kelly were just one of the characters instead of THE character.
THE UGLY STUFF
THE MESSAGE- Like La La Land and Babylon before it, the through line of JAY KELLY is that to achieve your dreams and have massive success, there is a part of you that must be internally miserable for the rest of your life due to some kind of a loss or sacrifice. This is overtly emphasized in these flashback sequences, where we see Jay Kelly acting like an unbelievably horrible person simply because he has to focus so much on his career.
It’s almost like the message this movie should have been: don’t be a f****** chump to the people that you love in order to make movies... But it was this message instead.
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This is good as it is. This is a film that tells its story very well, but very easily could have gone in a number of more interesting directions. GREAT script, really good performances, but the storyline is stuff you have seen before. This is yet another Oscar showcase for Clooney, and unlike the Clooney haters out there, I am not one to complain about that one bit.
Good is the word to describe this. Not very good. Not remotely bad. Just solid.
JAY KELLY is in select theaters now and will premiere on NETFLIX on December 5th
