On Screen: “Jay Kelly”
Jay Kelly
Fulfilling Sylvia Plath’s observation: “It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s easier to be somebody else or nobody at all” … Noah Baumbach’s bittersweet buddy movie “Jay Kelly” explores regret and missed opportunities — on a rarefied level.
When mega-movie star Jay Kelly (George Clooney) wraps his latest film, he’d like to spend time with his younger daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) before she leaves for college. Problem is: Daisy has already made plans with friends to go to a jazz festival in Paris and take a train to Northern Italy.
That hurts — particularly since Jay’s estranged older daughter Jessica (Riley Keough), a pre-K teacher in San Diego, previously reamed him out about his broken promises and shallow absentee parenting.
Then — after the funeral of his mentor, British director Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent) to whom he confided, “All my memories are movies” — Jay has a confrontation with an old acting classmate, Timothy (Billy Crudup), now a child therapist, resulting in assault charges filed against him.
That pushes Jay over the edge and onto the next flight to Europe, blithely informing his entourage that he’ll opt out of upcoming film to accept a lifetime award from a festival in Tuscany, coinciding with Daisy’s planned visit.
Unfortunately, since Jay originally turned down the award, his devoted manager Ron (Adam Sandler) arranged for it to go to another client, Ben Alcock (Patrick Wilson), already en route to Italy accompanied by his wife (Isla Fisher) and family.
Pampered Jay’s entourage includes publicist Liz (Laura Dern) and hair and makeup stylist Candy (Emily Mortimer), accompanying him on this impromptu, madcap road trip where charming Jay actually mixes and mingles with real people.
Co-writing with Emily Mortimer, writer-director Noah Baumbach specializes in dialogue-driven character studies (“Marriage Story”), and he’s on target with this charismatic, narcissistic, aging celebrity, inserting nostalgic flashbacks, illustrating each of these pivotal episodes — not unlike Ebenezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol.”
While George Clooney delivers a remarkably self-absorbed performance, Adam Sandler steals the picture, deftly capturing the pathos of a beleaguered manager who has sacrificed far too much for his stellar client over the years.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Jay Kelly” is an engaging, existential 8, streaming on Netflix.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.