“It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else, or nobody at all.” — Sylvia Plath

Right from its opening frames, which quote the Sylvia Plath diary entry above, Jay Kelly adopts the monumental task of eulogizing the Hollywood movie star. Noah Baumbach’s latest is both wistful and relentlessly entertaining, taking shape not only as a career retrospective of George Clooney, the movie’s effortlessly charming leading man, but the very idea of leading men in American cinema. Through its tale of celebrity and those left in its wake, the ensemble comedy-drama transcends its seeming confines as Hollywood navel-gazing, and becomes a moving, meaningful treatise on regret and the passage of time.

Its highly-choreographed opening shot, which lasts several minutes, pulls us through a moody, low-lit film set in a winding take, as the entire crew contorts itself around Jay Kelly (Clooney), an aging on-screen hero wrapping his umpteenth feature. Agents, assistants and technicians step in and out of the camera’s view, as Baumbach harkens back to the classical, free-flowing compositions of directorial greats (Hitchcock, Spielberg, Wells, etc.) all in service of bringing Kelly’s silhouette into the light, as his character in this film-within-a-film bleeds out from a gunshot wound while looking back on his life. It’s quite fun to watch for something so morose, if only because Kelly wants one final do-over when the shot doesn’t go as planned (his adorable canine co-star enters the frame too quickly). Before we know it, Baumbach has already tipped his hand as to what Jay Kelly is about: a man so magnetic that the world is pulled in by his gravity, and yet, as he sees it, something is amiss.

In life, there are no do overs, but in cinema, there are. This is the central tension underlying Jay Kelly, a story co-written by Baumbach and actress Emily Mortimer, about a globally beloved celebrity with a pristine image, but whose personal life is lacking, and who’s forced to recognize and reckon with the detritus of his career when he’s presented with tribute in Tuscany. Baumbach’s initial echoes of classical Hollywood mise en scène are as much a salute to bygone styles as they are to the screen legends they were used to capture (Kelly’s trailer is adorned with posters of bygone greats like Clark Gable and Paul Newman). The film, however, quickly returns to the measured blocking and considered cutting of most Baumbach films — courtesy of editor Valerio Bonelli — as we gradually peek behind the curtain of Kelly’s pristine image. With one daughter, Jessica (Riley Keough) far away, and the other, Daisy (Grace Edwards) headed for college, the single sixty-year-old is forced to take stock of what’s left when the cameras stop rolling.

In order to spend time with Daisy before it’s too late, Kelly concocts a hare-brained scheme to follow her on her European vacation instead showing up to his next production, dragging along his adoring entourage in the process. This includes his brutally honest publicist Liz (Laura Dern) and his long-suffering friend and manager Ron (Adam Sandler) — the movie’s secret weapon — whose own family life takes a hit every time Kelly is in a spot of bother. This time, the actor’s existential crisis is egged on both by the death of a mentor, Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), the director who gave Kelly his big break), as well as an uneasy reunion with his resentful old roommate Tim (Billy Crudup in a mesmerizing two-scene role).

The movie’s whizbang road-trip plot is often interrupted by vivid memories, as Kelly imagines guilty scenarios from his life as though they were movie scenes he could waltz right into as they were being filmed and cemented. A train from France to Italy, filled with dozens of doting fans, becomes a key inflection point, forcing Kelly to not only confront what he means to the public, but to the individuals he’s left behind, as the doors between train cars become temporary portals to the past.

It’s a film of wonderful imagination and rigorous drama, all wrapped in the delightful packaging of a glitzy Hollywood story, made in a moment when American movie stars are on a steep decline. Tom Cruise has made his final Mission: Impossible; Leonardo DiCaprio can no longer break the box office; and as always, stars like Clooney aren’t immune to accusations that they can “only” play themselves. “Do you know how difficult it is to be yourself?” Kelly often repeats, but the refrain isn’t just about the allure of familiar personas on the silver screen. It’s also about the actor finally realizing the kind of person he’s become in pursuit of fame, fortune, and artistry, and how he’d rather be anywhere but in his own vicinity.

There’s no better embodiment of these ripple effects than Kelly’s loyal manager Ron, who Sandler plays with a puppy-dog doting, as he tries to compartmentalize and convince himself that being tethered to Kelly for twenty years has all been worth it. As he lays track in front of moving trains, setting up last minute dinners and excuses for Kelly to travel between exotic locales. The more we witness the disconnect between Kelly’s public and private image, the more Ron struggles to bridge this gap — and the funnier the public’s swooning over Kelly becomes. As much as the film is steeped in meaningful drama, its comedy is also hilariously timed, between the bitter ironies of Kelly claiming he’s all alone only to be immediately handed a drink by a security guard, to a sycophantic Italian hanger-on dismissing the sincere efforts of a caretaker of a lush resort enjoyed by Kelly, waving the poor artisan away with “He has infinite COVID!”

This is just one of several guffaw-inducing lines amidst a story that also grows more emotionally piercing, as Kelly decides to reckon with his failings as a parent while also confronting his need for his own father’s approval. But these seemingly linear problems are all tied up in knots, and never have any neat solutions. In a simpler movie, a protagonist like Kelly might come to realizations about himself one step at a time and seek to solve his problems ASAP, but Jay Kelly wrestles with the idea of what these epiphanies are worth if one’s sins can’t be undone.

Baumbach’s most recent effort, Marriage Story, was partially autobiographical, in that it drew from the divorce of the filmmaker’s parents. Jay Kelly, despite being about the glamor and follies of A-list Hollywood, isn’t quite so removed from this idea: it plays as a reflection on the movies and aspirational screen stars who were just as responsible for raising Baumbach, and shaping his conception of the world. Clooney, although he “plays himself” (to the point of Kelly being bestowed with accolades for films Clooney actually starred in), is a mesmerizing centerpiece, given how skillfully and organically he layers charisma with remorse, as though his public and private images weren’t two separate entities, but sides to a coin. The film wouldn’t work as powerfully and sincerely as it does if Clooney weren’t so dialed into its central idea: that Kelly the lousy father and friend, and Kelly the darling VIP, could not exist without one another.

We love actors like George Clooney, but what does loving someone from a distance cost them? The big screen is love and light and radiance, but it’s also a curse, and the question of whether it extracts too great a price from its landmark artists is practically a misnomer. If Jay Kelly is about anything, it’s that there’s no deal with the Devil at a crossroads. Rather, even benevolent-seeming figures like Kelly, like Clooney, and perhaps even Baumbach, are the ones penning the particulars of these social and personal contracts. But is it too late by the time they notice the fine print? As the movie reaches its emotionally charged conclusion, it asks these questions (and more) of its audience quite directly, resulting in a wonderfully thoughtful denouement that’s entirely focused on Clooney’s face in a moment of surrender and uncertainty, as he blends together with Jay Kelly and practically gives himself over to however the fates, and the audience, will see him, once his life and career are all said and done.

Jay Kelly will be released in select movie theaters on November 14, 2025, and will make its Netflix debut on December 5.

Siddhant Adlakha (@SiddhantAdlakha) is a New York-based film critic and video essay writer originally from Mumbai. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Variety. the Guardian, and New York Magazine.