Jay Kelly (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

Jay Kelly

JAY KELLY (2025)

Starring George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Grace Edwards, Stacy Keach, Jim Broadbent, Patrick Wilson, Eve Hewson, Greta Gerwig, Charlie Rowe, Louis Partridge, Alba Rohrwacher, Josh Hamilton, Lenny Henry, Emily Mortimer, Nicôle Lecky, Thaddea Graham, Isla Fisher, Jamie Demetriou, Giovanni Esposito and Noah Baumbach.

Screenplay by Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer.

Directed by Noah Baumbach.

Distributed by Netflix. 132 minutes. Rated R.

Screened at the 2025 Philadelphia Film Festival.

The natural charm and charisma of George Clooney pretty much save this somewhat heavy-handed look at aging in Hollywood. The title character is obviously a role that Clooney understands – one that he has lived – so we want to give him a bit of slack when his story gets overly maudlin or navel gazing.

Jay Kelly is a sixty-Ish Hollywood action movie star whose career may be slowing down a bit, but it has offered him great wealth, fame and power. Everywhere he goes people kiss up to him and are starstruck. Yet, through most of the run time of the film he is having mini-crises about his life. Does he want to act anymore? Did his career stand in the way of his life as a father, a husband, a son or as a friend? Did he miss out on simply having the ability to do normal things? Was it all worth it? In fact, what was it all worth?

The guy has dozens of people whose life is thrown into chaos every time he has one of these little mid-life crises. He can afford a huge mansion, to rent a plane to fly to Europe at a moment’s notice, to bail on jobs upon which the careers of hundreds of people depend, just on a whim.

It’s a bit hard to get too worked up about this guy’s first-world problems.

It’s not like he was doing these things to be malevolent, or even that deep down he felt he was better or more important than others. He undoubtedly considered himself just an ordinary guy who got lucky. It’s just that he had spent so many years being catered to by others that he didn’t really know any better. Considering other people’s needs just didn’t really occur to him.

However, Jay Kelly is not just a poor little rich boy story. In fact, it is as much about the people around Jay who make his cushy little fantasy life run smoothly.

Those people around him are played by a strong cast of actors, so it’s a bit of a shame that the main character in Jay Kelly – in some ways even more important to the story than Jay himself – is played by Adam Sandler. Yes, they are trying to trick us into believing that Sandler can be a serious dramatic actor again, despite all the years of evidence to the contrary. Sandler basically has one dramatic mode – slightly annoyed befuddlement. Actors around him here – particularly Laura Dern – act rings around him. And one scene where he has to act like he is crying is just embarrassing.

Sandler is not the only actor who is misused here. Greta Gerwig, the wife and professional partner and artistic muse of writer-director Noah Baumbach, is given a completely nothing role as Sandler’s wife. And speaking of nothing roles, Patrick Wilson and Isla Fisher show up late in the story and are given nearly nothing to do. It’s really a shame because there is truly some fine acting going on here, particularly by Clooney, Dern and Billy Crudup.

Jay Kelly is not a bad film – in fact, it often is very good – but it never quite connects in the way it is trying to. I am a fan of Baumbach’s work (The Squid and the Whale, Greenberg, While We’re Young, Marriage Story), but he does tend to assume that every problem in his slightly gilded world would be fascinating to everyone watching, and he is usually wrong on this fact. Therefore, although most of his films – Jay Kelly included – have some wonderful moments but also have some cringeworthy ones.

I am reminded of what I said in my review of Marriage Story, because Jay Kelly has much the same problem. It “is very well-written, [mostly] flawlessly performed and well made. It looks at real life and real emotions. But, honestly, it’s not as interesting as Baumbach thinks it is… Let’s face it, no matter how vitally important it is to him, and no matter how much Baumbach thinks he is telling a universal story, everyone has their own stories.”

And, sadly, most of them are more interesting than Jay Kelly.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 16, 2025.