Kritiken

Jay Kelly has a lot of good ideas that never achieve greatness, as interesting concepts pop in here and there, but Baumbach and Mortimer’s strongest theme is the idea of how differing viewpoints can have wholly different perspectives on a moment in time.

Jay Kelly is more cutting than its bouncy name and beguiling leading man might suggest. With a supporting cast that includes Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Riley Keough, and Jay Kelly co-writer Emily Mortimer, this showbiz comedy brilliantly displays the highs and lows of working in movies, without losing sight of exactly how high those highs are.

Jay Kelly is a half-step between Clooney and Baumbach, too far from both to be directly truthful about either.

“Jay Kelly” is perhaps the closest a viewer can get to Clooney’s thoughts on his own fame this side of a memoir. And blended with Baumbach’s own neuroses, the film is a vain yet delectable dose of Hollywood humility, a crème brûlée that looks fancy and tastes great but isn’t so memorable after the thrill of cracking the top layer has subsided.

For a bustling movie set in a self-reflective Hollywood bubble, Jay Kelly is surprisingly mild. It’s the first Baumbach comedy that’s more amusing than hilarious.

The movie has absorbed its actor’s vibe. It looks great, and it ambles along pleasantly, rarely veering too far into the dramatic or the emotional; moments of tension or insight are often defused with a laugh or some other odd narrative distraction. But by the end, it gets you anyway.

Baumbach sells the sappiness in Jay Kelly with the same sincerity of his convictions as in his more acerbic works, the film holds together as a lightweight delight.

Baumbach is making his Fellini film, and it’s a joy to watch... Clooney is doing both sides of what he does best... harnessed expertly by Baumbach.

Ultimately, the dominant register is surprisingly sweet. And a bit chewy. The movie is not quite a star-studded marshmallow, but it comes close. Call it “Sunset Boulevard” for Nice Guys.

Baumbach’s film pirouettes into territory already trodden by Fellini’s 81/2 and Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, but smothers everything in a bland, Tuscan sunshine-syrup. The sharp realisations about the cruelty of show business are cancelled by gushes of Hollywood self-adoration and self-forgiveness and jokey non-comedy.

The film builds to a magnificently sad climax, with Clooney breaking the fourth wall and delivering probably his best screenwork ever.

On the one hand, the “Meyerowitz Stories” director has never been as allergic to sentimentality as his prickliest work might suggest... On the other hand, watching a director as scabrous as Noah Baumbach make a movie as tenderly indrawn as “Jay Kelly” can feel like watching a ginsu knife get dulled into a loofah.