Review: Clooney’s Jay Kelly lands as bland Hollywood satire

The New York Film Festival premiere of Jay Kelly casts George Clooney as a colossal movie star whose self-absorption eclipses the script, a bold-faced satire that reviews largely deem bland and repetitive. Clocking in at 132 minutes and rated R for language, the film opens a limited theatrical run Nov. 14 before a Netflix debut Dec. 5, with writer-director Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer co-writing the script.

Jay Kelly follows its titular megastar as he confronts a late-career crisis: the sense that his life exists more on screen than off it. Early on, Clooney’s star stares into a mirror, muttering his own name in a way that underscores the film’s central conceit — celebrity as performance and performance as identity. The narrative threads through Los Angeles, Paris and Tuscany, charting a path that reviewers say is aesthetically polished but dramatically flat. The character’s manager, Ron, is played by Adam Sandler, a steadying presence who resists a parody approach and instead registers as the closest thing to genuine warmth in the film.

The plot thickens when Tim, an old acting classmate portrayed by Billy Crudup, resurfaces and accuses Jay of stealing his career and life. What follows is a crisis that lands in Europe, where a spree of travelogue scenery — vineyards, cobbled streets and sunlit terraces — attempts to compensate for a narrative that feels especially familiar. Paris and the Italian countryside supply mood more than momentum, and the film’s travelogue tone can be as soothing as it is numbing. The movie’s supporting cast includes Laura Dern as a high-strung publicist whose role, critics say, echoes Baumbach’s past filmography more than it reveals new angles, while Stacy Keach provides a boisterous turn as Jay’s larger‑than‑life father. Jay’s eldest daughter, played by Riley Keough, is introduced in a pathos-laden scene that lands as heartfelt but ultimately underdeveloped in a script that keeps dialing back the consequences of Jay’s choices.

What some viewers will notice most on screen is Clooney’s star power, which the film both approves of and undercuts. At the outset, Jay is shown filming a death scene; yet the movie quickly reveals that the actor’s public shade and private inertia remain stubbornly fused, even as the plot pushes him toward a more explicit reckoning. The director’s lens emphasizes glamour and location — Parisian streets and Tuscan vistas become character study backdrops — but the page-turning tension of a true identity crisis rarely follows. In the end, Clooney’s performance draws audiences in, but the sense that the character and actor have merged into a single show-business creature persists, leaving the viewer with the impression that the performance outpaced the character.

Sandler, by contrast, succeeds in offering a human touch without tipping into a caricature. He’s the closest the film comes to emotional rooting, presenting Ron as a grounded counterweight to Jay’s escalating neuroses. Stacy Keach’s boozy dad provides a larger-than-life foil, and Riley Keough’s portrayal of Jay’s daughter inhabits a vulnerable center that the film sometimes lets drift away from the central arc. Still, even strong performances can’t fully illuminate a script that reviewers say leans too heavily on familiar industry shades and insider jokes.

The film’s tonal ambition sits in contrast to Baumbach’s recent competition, with critics noting a collision between a flashy Hollywood milieu and a run-of-the-mill satirical punchline. The studio‑set satire impulse invites comparisons to the Emmy-winning The Studio on Apple TV+, where a sharper wit and more incisive character work elevate the material. Critics say Jay Kelly never quite reaches that level of wit or warmth; its jokes can feel a step behind the cultural moment, and its emotional stakes never fully cohere around a unique point of view.

In its best moments, the film offers a meditation on fame’s dual nature — the thrill of being seen versus the price of living as one’s public image. Yet those moments are intermittent, and the movie’s strongest assets — the performances, the production design, the European locations — do not fully compensate for a story that circulates familiar ground with little risk. By the end, the central question remains: can a life lived in front of the camera ever feel real? For many viewers, the answer is elusive, and the film’s closing gesture reinforces that sense of emptiness.

Critics acknowledge that Clooney remains a commanding screen presence, capable of drawing audiences into the illusion that Jay Kelly’s life is as immersive as the movies that made him famous. But the broader assessment remains that the project is a stylish but hollow meditation on celebrity, one that risks cleverness but often settles for gloss. As a show-business satire, it aspires to bite and also to provoke reflection on what it means to be seen — and who pays the price when a life becomes a brand.

If the film’s ambition was to deliver a pointed critique of the industry from a veteran director and star, many reviewers say it lands more softly than intended. The result is a film that looks and sounds like a Hollywood thing, but without a clear, enduring reason for existing beyond the spectacle. The question for audiences will be whether the experience of watching Jay Kelly is enough to justify its length, its star power, and its glossy production values.

Ultimately, the film’s closing moments reiterate the central tension: does the convergence of Jay Kelly and Jay the person signify a triumph of showmanship or a surrender to soulless celebrity culture? Viewers may leave with a clearer sense of the former than the latter, and with an understanding that this particular critique of Hollywood, while stylish, stops short of delivering a truly sharp or affecting verdict.