Jay Kelly Movie REVIEW [Venice Film Festival 2025]

George Clooney and Adam Sandler star in Jay Kelly, a soulful, whimsical journey through regret and the bonds we forget to cherish.

“All my memories are movies” is a sentiment shared film fans around the world, surely shared by many reading this, and it’s a sentiment echoed the protagonist of Noah Baumbach’s latest work where aging movie star Jay Kelly (George Clooney) and his devoted manager Ron (Adam Sandler) embark on a whirlwind and unexpectedly profound journey through Europe. Along the way, both men are forced to confront the choices they’ve made, the relationships with their loved ones, and the legacies they’ll leave behind.

On the surface, Baumbach’s follow up to White Noise veers on the edge of feeling self-indulgent, given an undeniable autobiographical edge that permeates all through the film: from starting with a oner on a film set, to Baumbach’s self-inclusion in the film as… surprise: A film director; to the intelligent, yet unexpected fourth wall break that brings it all together. Yet, despite what these individual elements threaten to do, damaging the integrity of the story, together they end up elevating a story that runs purely on sentiment, and what a beautiful sentiment it is.

One that Baumbach is no stranger to, the director has a history of character driven story that despite their most outlandish qualities, always manages to keep us grounded in relatable reality, mostly through his characters. A credit that must be shared with his co-writer Emily Mortimer, who marks her brief yet impactful presence in the film as Jay Kelly’s hair & make up artist.

Despite the fact that we follow Jay Kelly in a movie named after the character, played by one of the most recognisable and arguable most iconic movie stars of our time, the film (and the man) never feels detached from reality, in fact, what’s so engaging about Jay Kelly as a character is that is past being hypnotised by the glitz and the glamour of fame and success. The man is past it, he now sees beyond it and realises what is truly important but life, like the movies, is a journey.

We follow Jay Kelly as he looks back at his life and reflects on the choices he made professionally, the sacrifices he made for the people around him when they didn’t really have a say, the successes that now have him feel hollow, and the mistakes he’s made that have damaged so many of his loved ones without him realizing.

It’s a movie not just about identity, but it forces the protagonist, and us, to interrogate his identity: When is it too late to stop being a bad friend? Or bad parent? When do we become irredeemable? Are we defined by the mistakes we can’t go back to fix? Or can we change ourselves and be a better version of ourselves? Be the version of ourselves we always wanted to be?

Throughout the film we’re taken into Jay Kelly’s mind as he reminisces on key moments of his life that led him down the path that brought him to where he is now: A man who after losing the director who gave him his first break, being confronted by an old friend who he wrong, becomes dispassionate about the adulation of the masses that has always been there (and still is), but what is not is the bonds he damaged and didn’t care for along the way, along the chase for that ever so elusive and undefined thing that’ll makes us “whole”.

These moments where Jay confronts the ghosts of his past; be it the people who no longer care to be there for him or previous versions of who he was, are brought to life with elegance and beauty and Baumbach brings us closer right before we step into a memory, creating the feeling that Jay his trapped in his own memories, haunted by these ghosts that trapped him in the now. We’re transported, along with Jay, from past to present and back not with a cut or some sort of visual effect, but instead it’s Jay himself who chooses to step into these private little worlds in his brain; moving from a train into the set of his first film, or a staggering directorial choice where a phone call becomes a solemn walk in a dark forest.

These sequences are not only visually & emotionally arresting but they force Jay into a desperate attempt to keep the people still around him close, but he’s confronted by the fact that, despite his ego never telling him so, those people have their own lives and have been affected by his choices without him even realising, or better yet: people who have been affected by his choices and he simply ignored it, because his passion took precedent.

Every sequence confronts a vulnerable Jay Kelly to look into who he truly is as a parent, as a friend, and even as a man, and the movie couldn’t have been better off than having George Clooney in the part. There’s a special quality to Clooney’s performance as Jay Kelly; not only does his vulnerability so naturally come to light but it’s as if he is dialling down the movie star charisma that has made him the star he is.

He’s focused on something beyond that as an actor and as a character, something rawer and purer and relatable, which is helped immensely by the phenomenal chemistry he shares with Adam Sandler as his manager Ron. The rapport between the two is like a beautiful tennis match of wits, and it’s the strongest relationship in the film as it’s the one where we see the cracks beginning to form and not one where the cracks are showing already.

A lot of the film, despite its introspective nature, even supports Ron’s view of Jay; by the time we’ve already seen Jay is not the best person, a quality that deserves praise as Baumbach does not shy away from painting Jay as a terrible father, a bad friend, and an egocentric celebrity whom the world revolves around. But characters aren’t that simple, more importantly, people aren’t that simple: we’re paradoxical beasts who can do just as much good as we can do bad.

How can people not be complex when we are so capable of loving and hating others, but more importantly when we have such a powerful capacity to hate ourselves above anyone else? No scene makes it clearer than when Jay chooses to go back to the last time he saw his oldest daughter Jessica (Riley Keogh), who in a moment of desperation asks her father to listen to how she was affected by his choices and his career, the path he chose instead of her, and Jay refuses; becoming now not only haunted by not being present in her life, but also by not taking accountability when she desperately wanted to simply be heard.

This is how Ron sees Jay, when the entire world is telling him Jay is not good for him, but a friend is a friend, and loyalty has to count for something. It’s this dynamic that not only brings tears but an immense sense of joy with each conversation the two shared, whether they are sharing a smile or wanting to give up on each other. But they are each other’s one and only constant, in a movie crowded with talent and recognisable faces: from Greta Gerwig, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Stacy Keach, Jim Broadbent, Eve Hewson, Patrick Wilson, Alba Rohrwacher, Josh Hamilton among so many others it’d be easy to lose track of who & what to focus on, but Baumbach’s focus is unflinching, only backing away from Jay when absolutely necessary to isolate him in his own mind.

These moments can feel a bit overwhelmingly expository, but in truth they illustrate Jay finally stop to try and rationalise the damage he’s done, little by little accepting that he isn’t this squeaky-clean person everyone should adore as they done. It’s not surprise that after each sequence where Jay looks into his past he comes back a more accepting version of himself who doesn’t try to rationalise his mistakes or act surprised when challenges on the damaged he’s caused, even if unintentionally.

The movie’s entire thesis can be found right as it starts with the quote: “It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be someone else or nobody at all.” Jay Kelly chose to lose himself in the roles he took to hides from his mistakes, the entirety of Jay Kelly ruminates on what it means to be yourself; using the star quality George Clooney adds to any frame to bring him, and the man he plays, back down to Earth and actually face the effects of his choices in a journey where the landscape is as transformative as the characters.

JAY KELLY beautifully blends melancholia & whimsy in an introspective journey through regret, the choices that define us & become ghosts of who we could’ve been. A phenomenal Clooney & Sandler share heartfelt chemistry in a soulful ode to the bonds we so often forget to cherish.

Final Grade: A

Jay Kelly will be released in select theaters on November 14th before coming to Netflix on December 5th.

NEXT: Venice Film Festival 2025: Bugonia Movie REVIEW