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Sunday Cinema presents: Jay Kelly

Jay Kelly is a well-meaning, circumspect and emotional journey through the life of a very successful actor (George Clooney) who travels to Italy to accept a tribute for the career that had given him everything, but also taken away the most valuable parts of his life.

The film is an examination of who exactly Jay Kelly is. Intermixed with flashbacks to several critical times in his life, Kelly is there to observe them happening, and as an outsider allows/forces him to view events that have more emotional weight than what he recalls. Image Scrooge revisiting his past, present and future and you get the idea. It’s only these episodes that really allow Kelly to see what a shitty friend/father/husband he is.

Clooney plays Kelly as a light, funny, self-absorbed and shallow character. He’s a movie star, used to the world revolving around him and a team of hired people to take care of his needs. What saves him is his charm and self-effacing glow. Fans love him, his paid business people have given their lives to him, but his family and former friends feel robbed.

In addition to Clooney, features Adam Sandler, Emily Mortimer, Riley Keough, Billy Crudup, Laura Dern, Stacy Keach and Greta Gerwig.

Most of these folks plays a role in Kelly’s life and are honest in how they see him as a father/son/client/friend, and it’s not pretty. Adam Sandler in particular finally sees how he’s given his life as an agent and is missing out on his own family, and realizes that in their years together, he and Kelly aren’t even friends.

Kelly tries to spend time with his two daughters but each of them have hard feelings towards him. While he believes he’s given them good lives and advantages, he really doesn’t know them and has trouble hearing it directly from them. What they wanted was his time, not his money. His charm does work on them and they can’t care less about his tribute, it was his career that prevented him from being more present in their lives.

Jay Kelly is not an original story by any means. The successful man or woman who looks back and sees a void left by placing their goals over anything else. What they realize is that it’s too late, and their dying word is “Rosebud.” That’s obviously a Citizen Kane reference.

Noah Baumbach co-wrote, co-produced and directed Jay Kelly. Films he’s worked on include Barbie, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale and White Noise. Jay Kelly is a slickly directed film and the transitions within scenes is expertly staged to bring both Kelly and the audience into his past.

Jay Kelly had generally received positive reviews, a 67 percent score on Metascope and a 76 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. My own rating would be 3.5 out of 5. Definitely better than average, but falls short in originality and needed tightening up, since the runtime is a long 132 minutes.

Kudos to George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Billy Crudup, Grace Edwards and Jessica Kelly who all delivered fine performances. It’s nice to see the continued effort by Sandler to embrace grownup, dramatic roles.