Directed By Noah Baumbach

Starring – George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern

The Plot – Famous movie actor Jay Kelly (Clooney) embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager Ron (Sandler). Poignant and humor-filled, pitched at the intersection of regrets and glories.

Rated R for adult language

Jay Kelly | Official Trailer | Netflix

POSITIVES

Movies centering around the ins and outs of the business are typically rooted in the kind of shallow wallowing and self-righteousness that unintentionally inspire pretentiousness to the engagement, and while “Jay Kelly” certainly has more than enough of these moments, on account of its protagonist going through a mid-life crisis that forces him to live with his eyes open for the first time in his storied career, it actually surmises a concoction of social commentary and truths about the industry that vividly convey the sacrifices not only made by the actors, but also the media teams responsible for feeding into the machine. This is where Baumbach and screenwriter Emily Mortimer (Also a supporting role in the movie) truly finds their heart and rhythm within the story that is, at times, overly exhausting by its outlooking scope, between Jay casually sifting through the most career-defining of moments with vividly recreating detail, but also Ron’s selfless commitment to a practice that ultimately doesn’t revolve around him, appraising cautionary urgency to the former and empathy to the latter, in ways that cement so much profound meaning to the characters, balancing the captivating efforts of Clooney and Sandler endlessly, towards grounding such superficial people with human relatability in conflicts. It’s one of those films where the line of detectability between life and the screen becomes all the more obscured the longer that Jay recounts these trivialized regrets, made three-dimensionally tangible by some stylistic approaches to transitioning sequences that are especially glitzy for Baumbach’s often realistically honest engagements. Whenever one of these thoughts comes to mind and recollection, the setting that he’s emanating from blends seamlessly into its frozen moment in time, helping to pit him at a virtual crossroads between past and present that immerse us more into the air of longing and regret that permeate from Jay’s occasional bouts with sincerity and sentimentality. It’s a schmaltzy touch in the most obvious of ways, but one that I’ve always been a sucker for in the advantageous exploits of a flawed protagonist seeking to make good, and while some of the production’s other touches with expansive creativity distract and detract at the most defining moments, I loved seeing such a uniquely personal touch to surmise opportunistic exposition in the backstory of the character, giving the audience first-hand knowledge of Jay’s rise to the top, even at the open-ended honesty that detracts from his morality. It should come as no accident that Clooney is portraying Jay, as the two bare a lot of the same socially perceived lack of dimensionality within their emotional acting that makes this feel written exclusively for him, a fact made all the more glaringly evident with a touching celebration during the movie’s ending, which finds a cleverly effective way of utilizing memorable moments from Clooney’s real-life movies, into the magnitude of Jay’s career retrospective. Being that it includes footage from films like “Three Kings”, “From Dusk Till Dawn”, and “Michael Clayton”, among many others, I can’t even imagine the time, money, and effort that went towards securing the rights to showcase so many studio-varied projects, and while one can certainly label this monumentally meaningful moment in the film as self-indulging, it’s another of Baumbach’s ways to blend the world’s of fictional and non accordingly, made all the more moving by Clooney eliciting some of his emotionally challenging acting of the entire film, without any dialogue to illustrate how a career of memories is hitting him subconsciously. Speaking of acting, the film features an extensive ensemble of familiar faces (Such as an aggressive turn from Riley Keough, or an impressive on-demand emotional outpouring from Billy Crudup) to round out one of the more prestigiously gifted casts of the year, but it’s ultimately Clooney and Sandler who brandish the most mesmerizing work of those involved, with each maintaining such a firm grasp on the authenticity of their complex characters. When Clooney isn’t effortlessly entailing the arrogance and ineffectuality of his wealthy lifestyle, there is a surprising amount of vulnerability and remorse in his exploits of the past that confirm a soul permeating beneath his gruff and occasionally shallow demeanor, complimenting Clooney’s effortless charisma endlessly in a role that should feel comfortable to him, and Sandler, while not exactly his most dramatically demanding turn of his career, does solidify a concrete foundation to the movie’s humanity that is made transparent by the gentle tenderness that Adam supplants to his portrayal, feeling like a legitimately caring source to Jay’s therapeutic outpouring, even at the cost of his own diminishing family time, that weighs heavily on Sandler’s averted attention.

NEGATIVES

Aside from the Herculain difficulty of being asked to invest firmly into a titular protagonist whose undying wealth and uncompassionate underlining make him the very definition of white privilege, the film also tests the patience of its audience with a bloated middle section of the narrative that not only overstuffs the movie’s 127-minute runtime with the kind of long takes that rob it of any long-form momentum to its storytelling, but also deviates its attention towards too many of the shuffled supporting characters, who take away focus and emotional impact from the air of Jay’s introspective arc. This is a movie that undoubtedly feels every minute of its ambitious runtime, especially during a second act that certainly could’ve used another trip to the editing room floor, in order to hyphenate so many of these long-winded scenes that add little to nothing to the conversation, and with these brutally sharp tonal clashes to the material that improperly execute comedy during some tenderly intimate moments of character growth for Kelly, makes it feel like a first time directing effort, instead of someone with thirty years of experience in the industry as a master storyteller. The comedy itself is far less effective than some of Baumbach’s best films, especially featuring tone-deaf punchlines that won’t exactly cater to the majority of audiences engaging within it, but even the dialogue itself feels far too punchily animated and artificial to indulge effortlessly into buying these as living and breathing soulful characters, instead of Hollywood types, a fact made all the more glaringly evident in the ways Baumbach constantly intersects them with other pocketed conversations, in order to convey the tumultuously chaotic atmosphere of the Hollywood elite, instead of opportunities to engage naturally in some of their varying conflicts. While I am a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin for the kinds of snappy dialogue that he constantly interjects to the air of his characters, it doesn’t have the same appeal to the kinds of filthily rich personalities promoted with Baumbach and Mortimer’s writing, especially as they ask the audience to empathize so much in them, and it leaves a glaring disconnect that doesn’t subdue itself the longer the film casually persists, where everybody is either doing their best Vince Vaughn impersonation, or are so removed from the human experience that they lack the rhythms and consistencies of even basic interaction. Aside from the stumbles with the screenplay, the technical components equally entail inconsistencies, particularly the film’s score from Nicholas Britell, who is among my favorite composers working today, and horrendously awful A.D.R, which constructs distracting emphasis to one particular actor who may have had difficulty executing a majority of their lines. On the former, Britell’s compositions try so hard to tap into the tragedies of a life spent catering to career instead of family, but instead overextend their instrumentals towards feeling melodramatic with the balance of the imagery, and while they would be great instrumentals for an epic action film, they don’t exactly correspond to the slice of life dramatic sentiments that Baumbach films typically cater towards, a hinderance that nearly wipes any semblance of empathy from a third act where Jay feels more vulnerable than ever before. As for the sloppily edited audio deposits, it’s ultimately Adam Sandler who is most noticeably plagued by post-production influence, especially throughout many scenes where his mouth is evidently moving, yet the overhead dialogue is being read by another cast-member entirely, especially the scenes in and around the story’s travel by train, which completely stole my attention to remain faithfully by Sandler’s. While the volume levels are surprisingly subtle for A.D.R, the visuals don’t line up synthetically with the consistencies of the conversations, made especially evident on a big screen showcasing of the movie, conjuring some of the worst audio deposits that I have ever seen, in an industry with no shortage of them.

OVERALL
“Jay Kelly” is a wistfully relentless dramedy about the lack of second takes with life, reminding us that not all the glitters is gold to a man who presumably has everything, but in actuality lacks the connection away from the glitz and glamour of the industry. While the film’s uphill climb of empathizing with a rich, handsome movie star doesn’t always come across naturally in the inconsistencies of the material, especially without the appeal of Noah Baumbach’s dependable comedy driving the frantic conversations, the memorable turns from George Clooney and Adam Sandler are the glue that keep it together, garnering enough lightweight tenderness to a film that overly indulges in monotonous melodrama.

My Grade: 6.9 or C+