Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, is back with a look at the new film Jay Kelly.
By MIKE FRIED
JAY KELLY
*** 1/2
Megastar Jay Kelly is riding high. He’s just finished a movie and has another lined up. And then one of his old time friends, a director he calls Pop (because he was the man who gave him his big break), passes away. And at the end of the service, he runs into an old acting class friend — or someone who he thinks is a friend and that ends rather badly — and he suffers a crisis of confidence. So he whisks himself and his entourage to visit his daughter in Paris and Italy for a tribute that his manager negotiated and all the while he is brought back to his past and looks at his regrets.
It’s sort of hard to relate to a movie star having a crisis of confidence. Yes, I know that actors are people too but in the words of Max Bialystock, “They are? Have you ever tried eating with one?”
And I have to be honest: By and large I’m not a fan of Noah Baumbach, so this movie has that strike against it before I even turn it on. I’m not saying that I hate everything he’s done. I rather liked Marriage Story but the only other film of his that I liked was the Squid and the Whale. And by making a movie about a movie star having the so-called crisis of confidence – among other things – just seems like Baumbach trying to make his imprint on cinema, his Wild Strawberries or his 8 1/2 (or even Stardust Memories) and a lot of it feels forced. I mean how many movies do we need about regret? We have Birdman, we have The Artist, we have Trumbo, we have Flashbacks of a Fool (okay, scratch that one).
George Clooney is absolutely terrific as Jay Kelly and he delivers a performance that can clearly count as a career best or certainly a Top Three. He wears his age on his face and whatever he does to make himself younger – including using a Sharpie on his eyebrows to get rid of the grey – doesn’t help him recapture the missed opportunities of the past. But he’s a lost soul. And as the trip to Italy progresses, almost his entire entourage abandons him. He can’t even get his elderly father to stay for his tribute.
But this movie belongs to Adam Sandler. As Jay Kelly’s manager and best friend, the Sandman has also lived a life of regret, all in service to his friend, even if it meant giving up the woman of his dreams. Sure, he loves the family he has now and he regrets not being with them when they need him. But he really shows the pain in his eyes, especially when he gets rebuked by Jay for dealing with other clients. And he shows genuine pain – infused with humor – when he loses a longtime client. Because his Ron loves Jay. But he has lost his identity-he has become Jay Kelly because he has been in service to Jay for so long. “I’m the only one who is here” he tells Jay, regretfully. He makes the movie.
(In true Sandler style, he wears his sneakers throughout the entire film — maybe his Ron negotiated that!)
And while the movie is derivative, it’s no less enjoyable because Clooney and Sandler are so good together. And it has a terrific supporting cast from Laura Dern to Billy Crudup to Greta Gerwig to Jim Broadbent. And Stacy Keach is particularly wonderful (and slim!) as Jay’s dad.
The movie, co-written by Baumbach and – in her feature film debut as a writer — Emily Mortimer, has its highs and lows (I’d like to think Mortimer was responsible for the Highs). When Jay takes a walk into the middle of the fog shrouded forest it rings of pretentiousness or, even worse, imitation.
But, grouch that I am, have to admit that the last ten minutes of the film were beyond amazing and made the prior hour and 57 minutes worth sitting through.
It is worth a WATCH
*** 1/2
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
