Baumbach also employs that diametrical Chinatown-esque contrast between the nostalgically sunlit glow of Southern California (and then Italy, a nod to one of Clooney’s real-life domiciles), which paints Jay’s skin a weathered shade of orange as he strolls through spotless art deco mansions and alongside bountiful vineyards, and what he probably hopes will be shadier, weightier themes.
Indeed, his highly-accomplished DP shows a particular knack for seeking out the hero’s darker side (ultimately perhaps, in vain) through a mixture of light sources behind and beneath him. However, all this strangely old-fashioned cinematic curiosity merely reveals that the thematic concerns of Jay Kelly are basically ‘it’s a bit weird being rich and famous, innit?’
As a movie star of some decades’ standing, George Clooney would probably be the first to admit that even with the best will in the world, his ‘real’ acting opportunities have been limited by his suave, disingenuously self-effacing screen persona. (The montage shown during the award ceremony at the film’s climax is, of course, made up of ‘name that pic’ clips from Clooney’s own career.) Clearly he sees all this as a shot at artistic respectability as a ‘real’ actor, just like the forefathers his character names aloud (Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable) in a moment of alliterative solitude.
From underneath the crisp, shiny surface of an endless celebrity itinerary too often spelled out by Baumbach’s inconsistently ironic script (co-written with Emily Mortimer, who also takes a small role in the Kelly gang), Clooney does his level best to unearth some nuggets of genuine vulnerability. Unfortunately for him, said script is stuffed with cod-therapeutic observations and witty aphorisms so on-the-nose that they sound far more insightful than they actually are.Likewise, even his excellent and mostly wasted supporting cast (gruff mentor Jim Broadbent, friend-turned-rival Billy Crudup, paranoid publicist Laura Dern, filterless dad Stacy Keach) can’t imbue such meaningless writing with meaning. Adam Sandler’s careworn sidekick is clearly intended to ground Jay in some kind of reality, but despite his amusing and touching chemistry with Clooney, his character lacks the agency or authority to do much more than squeeze his hand a bit tighter on his journey of self-discovery.
Annoyingly, the destination of that journey is just a patronising fetishisation of ‘ordinary’ life. Some of the scenes set on a French train, where Jay is inspired to interact with members of the general public, have the same forced inauthenticity of that bit towards the end of Darkest Hour when Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill takes a straw poll on the Tube about whether to continue the fight against Hitler. Although the stakes are much lower, the gag reflex tastes just as unpleasant.Tales from the Hollywood insider can so easily come off as self-indulgent dross, made by and most likely for a like-minded audience who’ll nod their heads and emit a knowing chuckle in all the right places, while the rest of us mere mortals can pretty much go hang. Barring a few comic beats of biting levity or caustic incision, Jay Kelly falls squarely into this trap of simply being what it seeks to send up. It burrows so deeply into its subject that all it finds is more stale air, and perhaps the filmmakers realised this so late in the writing process that they decided the best option was to just try really hard to make it look solid.
As a leaner, more disciplined satire whose milk of human kindness had gone sour, it might have been a gleefully subversive cracker. But it goes too easy on its protagonist, and therefore on the empty, self-absorbed bubble he represents. For all his clever stylistic choices, Noah Baumbach’s love / hate relationship with Hollywood needs a lot more of the latter than the former, and the best one can say about the film as it stands is that everyone involved can do better than this.-Stew Mott-
