{"id":99372,"date":"2025-08-28T20:14:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T20:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/99372\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T20:14:02","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T20:14:02","slug":"jay-kelly-review-even-a-george-clooney-sizzle-reel-cant-save-this-dire-noah-baumbach-effort-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/99372\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Kelly review \u2013 even a George Clooney sizzle reel can\u2019t save this dire Noah Baumbach effort | Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everybody loves George Clooney<\/a>, and rightly so. His performances in films such as Michael Clayton, Out of Sight and Ocean\u2019s Eleven have been a joy, and as an elegant public figure he has more or less single-handedly underwritten the continuing currency of Hollywood classiness. But in this dire, sentimental and self-indulgent film, he has the look of a man who has found strychnine in his Nespresso pod and can\u2019t remember which of the cupboards in his luxury hotel suite contains the antidote.<\/p>\n

It is directed by Noah Baumbach, whose 2022 film White Noise, based on the Don DeLillo novel, was a superb competition entry at Venice. (Baumbach was reportedly disconcerted by a tepid response; I thought it was brilliant<\/a>.) But this one is a grisly, sucrose, sub-Fellini swoon on the subject of a super-handsome Hollywood actor attending a Italian arts festival to accept a lifetime achievement award, and naturally experiencing endless bittersweet flashbacks to his youth, in which the middle aged Jay Kelly looks on, with that knowing Clooney smile.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The reason for attending this festival is so that Kelly can bump into his teenage daughter who is backpacking around Europe. He even takes the humble train so he can hang out with her, and thereby encounters an uproarious array of picturesque and ordinary people, including a hyperactive German cyclist played by Lars Eidinger.<\/p>\n

And at this moment of midlife self-examination, Kelly feels that he has let everyone in his life down (although bafflingly the mother of his grownup children has gone missing from the story). He is estranged in serious and non-serious ways from his daughters (played by Riley Keough and Grace Edwards), he is preparing to betray his longsuffering agent Ron (Adam Sandler), he has refused to help his directorial mentor (Jim Broadbent) and he is plagued with memories of how at the beginning of his career he ruthlessly stole a key part from his more talented drama school pal (Billy Crudup), whose career went downhill afterwards. And he can\u2019t decide who he is, or if there is any one behind the celebrity mask.<\/p>\n

So Baumbach\u2019s film pirouettes into territory already trodden by Fellini\u2019s 81\/2 and Woody Allen\u2019s Stardust Memories, but smothers everything in a bland, Tuscan sunshine-syrup. The sharp realisations about the cruelty of show business are cancelled by gushes of Hollywood self-adoration and self-forgiveness and jokey non-comedy.<\/p>\n

Finally, Kelly watches a sizzle-reel of his roles at the festival ceremony, and of course these are clips of Clooney\u2019s actual films (no ER though). It is an unbearable imposition on the audience\u2019s affections, but there is a tear in Jay\u2019s eye. Cine-narcissism like this is always tiresome, and it isn\u2019t any more palatable in a European setting.<\/p>\n

Jay Kelly screened at the Venice film festival<\/a>. It is in cinemas from 14 November and on Netflix from 5 December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everybody loves George Clooney, and rightly so. His performances in films such as Michael Clayton, Out of Sight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-99372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}