'Jay Kelly' Review: Baumbach is Back With a Poignant Story of Fame and Fatherhood
- Alex Gilston
- Oct 15
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 28
By Alex Gilston - October 15, 2025
In Marriage Story (2019), writer-director Noah Baumbach came toe to toe with his personal life, making a film specifically about divorce. Its biggest strength is its authentic honesty about his experiences that shine through in the screenplay and live through the central performances. After having a silly goofy break with 2022’s absurdist comedy White Noise, Baumbach has returned to dissect more of his life but in relation to his work this time. Jay Kelly is Noah Baumbach wrestling with his tenured career in filmmaking, and the positives and pitfalls that come with that life. It’s a warts and all story that brings back that feeling of real movie magic.
Jay Kelly opens with one of the most beautiful one-shot takes in a film in recent memory. It’s slow and understated but filled with rich visuals to introduce us to Jay Kelly’s world. This really is his world too, as the shot slowly zooms on him as he takes control of the take, we instantly know this is where he belongs. The titular character, played by none other than major movie man George Clooney, is the old-time Hollywood movie star. He has it all, filming movies back to back, adored by fans, a team of dedicated staff led by Ron Sukenick (Adam Sandler), and a lavish house in the Hollywood hills. Despite being in this super-privileged position he is estranged from one of his children, and barely has a relationship with the other.
On the eve of him starting to shoot a new movie, a conversation with his youngest daughter Daisy Kelly (Grace Edwards) sends him into an existential spiral. Worried about this relationship going the same way as it did with his eldest daughter Jessica Kelly (Riley Keough) he decides to follow Daisy to Europe, without her knowing, to try and keep his connection with her alive. So he cancels his filming, books the travel for him and his team, with little thought for the plans they might already have, and sets off to reconcile his relationship with his daughter and attend a tribute to his career.
Jay Kelly strikes an uneven balance between the life Jay wants and the life he has made for himself. He is on the run from Hollywood and his fame to find something more meaningful to him at that moment. There is a sequence where he tries meeting Daisy on a train, but is stopped in his tracks by a carriage full of his fans. Clooney plays this scene brilliantly as a person who has done it millions of times before. When he gets to Daisy though his demeanour changes and he isn’t quite sure how to hold himself. The screenplay constantly puts him on the cusp of these moments he so badly desires, but never quite lets him past the finish line.
This central theme also manifests itself beautifully in some practical movie magic. Throughout Jay Kelly he is exposed to important moments from his rise to stardom. These memories are constructed like the movie sets he’s worked on all of his life. Plane doors become wooden walls that he can move through to his past, and people manifest like ghostly apparitions from afar so he can watch on as he reminisces. This interchangeability between both the real and the fake world is conducive to the war going on in his head, as he tries to choose between the two. The emotional weight of this is felt as he’s trying to find something real but is constantly being pulled back by his life of fame.
George Clooney is at his best. After Fantastic Mr Fox, he has proven that his and Noah Baumbach's dialogue is a match made in heaven. Adam Sandler is also a huge presence in Jay Kelly, proving that he fits perfectly into a more serious dramatic role. His relationship with Jay is the anchor of the film and it partially wouldn’t exist without him. There are so many roles where people pop up for a short time, make their impact on the narrative and more importantly on the journey Jay Kelly goes on.
The conclusion of Jay Kelly brings all of Baumbach’s ideas together in a bittersweet and overwhelmingly emotive scene. The same honesty which brims out of Marriage Story reveals itself here too. It might view Jay Kelly’s career with a hint of rose tinted glasses, but it also acknowledges everything he has sacrificed too. In the final shot Kelly breaks the fourth wall and asks for another go around. That’s the heart of Jay Kelly when all is said and done, no matter how impactful the things we have done in our life might be, we will always mourn those things we couldn’t properly have and probably never will.
Jay Kelly will make its UK premiere at the 2025 BFI London Film Festival on 10 October, ahead of its cinema release on November 14 and Netflix debut on December 5.
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