Jay Kelly

Last night I went to see Jay Kelly at the Broadway.  I am a big fan of director Noah Baumbach and I really enjoyed it.  Jay Kelly (George Clooney) is an incredibly famous movie star with a 35 year career in Hollywood who has an existential crisis and questions whether his career has been worth the cost of all of his important relationships.  He spontaneously decides to travel to Europe, ostensibly for a tribute at a film festival but really to spend time with his youngest daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) who is on a trip with friends.  This forces members of his entourage, including his manager Ron (Adam Sandler), his publicist Liz (Laura Dern), and others, to leave their families on short notice to travel with him.  He has a series of misadventures on a train, including an incident with a German cyclist (Lars Eidinger) that goes viral, and reminisces, through flashbacks, about important people who are no longer in his life, including Peter (Jim Broadbent), the director who gave him his first big break, Timothy (Billy Crudup), a friend who blames him for stealing a role meant for him, Jessica (Riley Keough), his oldest daughter who feels abandoned by him, and Daphne (Eve Hewson), an actress with whom he had an ill-fated affair.  When he gets to the film festival, his daughter, who is angry at being followed, refuses to attend, his father (Stacy Keach), who he reluctantly invited, decides to go home early, and most of his entourage, who all have other responsibilities, abandon him.  His only support is Ron, who is paid to be there, and, even though the audience at the festival is visibly moved by a retrospective of his work, he finally realizes what he has lost.  This is a bit bloated with lots of underdeveloped characters to keep track of but I really liked the message about what truly matters in life which is shown through the juxtaposition between Jay and Ben (Patrick Wilson), a less famous actor who arrives at the festival with his wife (Isla Fisher) and other family members, as well as between Jay and Ron, who ultimately resigns in order to be with his wife (Greta Gerwig) and family.  This is a powerful exploration of a man living with regrets but it is also incredibly funny (I especially loved a running bit about a rider that stipulates having cheesecake on all of Jay's movie sets and at his appearances and another one in which he whines about being alone while having staff members cater to him).  Clooney is at his very best as Jay (a stand-in for himself?) and, even though I am not a big fan of Sandler, I was incredibly impressed with his performance as Ron.  I also loved Eidinger, who is absolutely deranged as the cyclist, and Alba Rohrwacher, who is hilarious as a fawning festival committee member.  You can probably wait to watch this on Netflix but I definitely recommend checking it out when it begins streaming on December 5.