Noah Baumbach’s new film shows Clooney as a famous actor struggling in midlife – it’s a meta masterpiece
There but for the grace of God. Is this what George Clooney thought as he made Jay Kelly, a beautifully judged film about the perils of showbusiness and late middle-age regret?
Jay Kelly is a handsome, ageing actor who is often accused of playing himself, recognised everywhere he goes for his charming smile and powerful on-screen charisma. The similarities between Clooney and Kelly are clearly intentional; indeed, there’s a terrific breaking of the fourth wall at the end (the most powerful use of the device since Fleabag) just to hammer that message home.
It’s great fun watching Clooney play this passively congenial version of himself, a man perpetually bemused by his own life (“Do you know how hard it is to be yourself?” people keep saying throughout). But really this meta masterpiece, written and directed by Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story), is about the path not trodden by Clooney, the life he’d have had, perhaps, had he not met his wife Amal, had children and retreated from the perpetual bachelorhood for which he seemed destined.
Kelly has had a wildly successful 35-year Hollywood career, but recently has started to feel that something isn’t right. First, his mentor (gorgeously played through flashbacks by Jim Broadbent) dies. Then he runs into an old acting school pal, Tim, once more talented than him and now an embittered child psychologist who, after some disingenuous banter, tells Kelly that he stole his life.
Washed-up Tim is played by Billy Crudup with a monstrously enjoyable lack of ego, ripping into actorly pretentions as he sobs his way through a restaurant menu to demonstrate his enduring ability to cry on cue. Kelly wonders if he has made good life choices. Why don’t his kids want to hang out? Why is there always cheesecake waiting for him in every room? “You said you liked it once. You don’t remember but you did,” his manager insists.
On a whim, Kelly rallies his entourage to help him find his daughter, who is on a trip around Europe, and persuade her to accompany him to an event in Italy honouring his career. Said entourage is huge and only semi-loyal, packed with people and performances that threaten to steal the show from Clooney. There’s his slightly scornful publicist Liz, played by Laura Dern (who won an Oscar for her last Baumbach collab in Marriage Story), chatty hairdresser Candy (Emily Mortimer, who co-wrote the script), and an army of sycophantic fans who wait on him hand and foot in Tuscany, including a relentlessly upbeat driver (Alba Rohrwacher).
At the helm of his entourage is his hapless manager Ron, tenderly played by Adam Sandler, doing the best work of his career. We’re always trying to work out whether poor Ron has willingly made all these sacrifices, and whether Kelly even cares.
Baumbach has the good sense not to indulge in too much of a pity party for poor millionaire Kelly. At the heart of all this is not just an abject movie star, but the question of connection and how we get it. Connection with film-lovers. Connection with family. Connection with strangers.
In one wonderful scene, Baumbach’s camera lovingly pauses on the faces of random train passengers, seeing them, as Kelly does, with curiosity and yearning. How are they so themselves? How are they so blithely happy? Kelly is so desperate for connection that he invites his estranged enfant terrible father, mischievously played by Stacy Keach, to his tribute. His dad’s cruel dismissiveness goes a long way to explaining why Kelly yearned for external validation in the first place.
It’s such a smart script, dancing neatly between wry humour and existential meditation. Should Kelly have done things differently? An absolute knock-out final scene (which includes a montage of actual Clooney films) suggests that the question is not so simple; success and regret are frequent bedfellows. A Kelly who had spent loads of time with his kids might also have ended up as embittered as washed-up Tim.
This film has the conversational dexterity and comedy of early Woody Allen films, the sadness of Lost in Translation, and the appealingly self-referential celebrity heft of Notting Hill. It is Baumbach, Sandler and Clooney at the top of their games, in a game where the audience is very much invited to play.
‘Jay Kelly’ is on Netflix from 5 December
