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![](\"https:\/\/cdn.craft.cloud\/26ed9c78-feb7-4ee6-8ddf-262fd7bafb2d\/assets\/tco\/images\/Jay-Kelly-Netflix.jpg\")
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While Kelly reckons with his own personal failings \u2013 occasionally detailed in flashbacks filling out his path to stardom \u2013 his crew have problems of their own. His manager Ron is constantly on the phone to his incredibly understanding wife Lois (Greta Gerwig) as she deals with their own familial crisis, while Kelly\u2019s publicist Liz (Laura Dern) frantically tries to ensure her client\u2019s unscheduled holiday doesn\u2019t put him in breach of contract. A\u00a0hive of other personnel \u2013 assistants, make-up artists, stylists, security \u2013 buzz around Kelly, who professes to want freedom but doesn\u2019t seem to have the first clue what he\u2019d do with it. Yet it\u2019s easy to see why all these people remain in his orbit; Kelly is effortlessly charming and frustratingly good at getting his own\u00a0way.<\/p>\n
The freewheeling train ride across Italy sees Kelly meet a\u00a0bizarre array of bumbling European stereotypes (Jamie Demetriou and Patsy Ferran\u2019s flustered British tourists among the more egregious) but finds its emotional core in the relationship between the star and his long-suffering manager. The long-suffering Ron has sacrificed much of his personal and professional happiness to be at his employer\u2019s beck and call, and Sandler\u2019s gentle hangdog aura is a\u00a0pleasant foil to Clooney\u2019s star-wattage, as well as a\u00a0study in contrasts between two indisputable Hollywood heavyweights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the weight of this core relationship and novel question of how one finds personal meaning in a\u00a0life defined by transactions veers scattershot in places, as easily diverted and prone to flights of fancy as Kelly himself. Kelly\u2019s regrets \u2013 chiefly being an absent father and a\u00a0bad friend \u2013 are hardly groundbreaking, particularly within the context of a\u00a0Noah Baumbach movie. So much of the film leans on the dramatic heft that Clooney, Sandler and the spirited supporting cast are able to bring to the table. (It\u2019s a\u00a0crying shame there\u2019s not more of Gerwig, on fine form as a\u00a0gently frazzled LA<\/span> mum juggling a\u00a0neurotic teenager and a\u00a0toddler with preternatural comedic timing.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s a\u00a0testament to the smartness of this casting that Jay Kelly <\/i>works as well as it does, even if the echos of Hollywood mythmaking are unavoidable. Perhaps that\u2019s part of it; \u200b\u201c<\/span>All my memories are movies\u201d Kelly remarks, and a\u00a0charitable reading suggests the most cloyingly sentimental and obvious moments of Baumbach and Mortimer\u2019s script merely reflect their protagonist\u2019s crisis of confidence, as he searches to find himself the only way he knows how: through tropes, takes and tableaus. Depending on one\u2019s appetite for affectionate ruminations on the fragility of the male ego among society\u2019s most exalted, your mileage may\u00a0vary.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the Clooney of it all. In press before the film\u2019s ritzy Venice Film Festival premi\u00e8re, Clooney professed to not \u200b\u201c<\/span>give a\u00a0shit<\/a>\u201d if people think he only ever plays himself (Jay Kelly <\/i>seems to be powerful evidence to support his statement). There\u2019s no separating the art from the artist in this instance; the very construct of Clooney as The American Movie Star is so tied into Jay Kelly<\/i> it feels difficult to imagine the film being as charming as it is with anyone but Clooney in the central role. (If a\u00a0comparable American figure exists, it\u2019s Tom Cruise, who presumably swore off any remotely interesting or left-field roles after Tropic Thunder<\/i>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, when Kelly finally makes it to the big film festival award ceremony and a\u00a0highlight reel plays clips from his filmography, naturally it\u2019s a\u00a0montage of Clooney\u2019s career that we see. As he gazes up at his own visage ageing before his eyes, a\u00a0movie mythology in motion, it\u2019s impossible to tell if we\u2019re watching Clooney or Kelly or the strange liminal space where the two meet, inextricable from one another and forever immortal on the silver screen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n