REVIEW:
Jay Kelly was just an okay movie. That’s no surprise when you consider this cast. George Clooney hasn’t made a fun movie in ages. He used to be pretty exceptional, back when he was working with Steven Soderbergh on movies like Out of Sight and Oceans Eleven. Even when he turned more political with movies like Syriana and Michael Clayton, he was still hitting it out of the park. But in more recent years, he’s been playing it a little too safe, which means nothing creative, nothing interesting. Examples that show this are Money Monster and Ticket To Paradise (both of which starred him and Julia Roberts together, coincidentally.) But there have been plenty of others, including quite a few that Clooney directed himself, such as the Monuments Men.
Unfortunately, Jay Kelly falls right along in step with those. The movie is about an aging movie star. The story is about him going to Europe to try to find and spend time with one of his daughters. Only there’s not really a movie there. If that’s the mission, then it’s a very simple mission and seems incredibly unfulfilling. That’ because the movie doesn’t really have a set plot or agenda. It’s more about spending time with these characters as they travel.
Clooney plays the title character and Adam Sandler plays his manager, Ron Sukenick. For Sandler, this is another attempt at drama for him, although it’s not exactly dramatic. But it’s certainly not funny either. I guess serious would be the word, if that was a genre. Boring would be another. He doesn’t have a whole lot to do here, other than follow Jay Kelly around and make comments to the other people who are also following him around.
As far as Kelly himself goes, his story starts out good, but then really loses its way. At the start of the movie, we are with him on the set of a movie, talking to a director as they are filming. It’s a pretty cool opening scene, being on a movie set, behind the scenes, and watching how they make the movie. We watch Kelly and the directors discuss the scene, and whether or not he wants another take. And then we are off, and that’s the last time we will be on a movie set for the rest of this film. That’s unfortunate, considering the movie is about a movie star. It would have been cool to see more of his usual life and the inner workings of the industry.
Instead, this movie is more like “a movie star goes on vacation.” Luckily there is something that happens first. In fact two things. First, there’s an older man who was like a father to Kelly and now wants Kelly to attach his name to a project. Just to be a small part of it, because it will help get the project made. Only Kelly refuses. He tells the man, “if it’s about the money, I will just give you the money,” but he won’t make a move that might affect his reputation. Not long after this, the older man dies.
The next situation involves one of Kelly’s old friends. He shows up to the funeral and he and Kelly reconnect. They go out to drinks together, where the man (Timothy, played by Billy Crudup,) tells Kelly that he hates him. He gets brutally honest with Kelly, telling the man that they used to be friends and then Kelly stole his part in a movie, and also stole his girlfriend. Then they proceed to get into a fist fight in a parking lot. This is great stuff. It’s only a few scenes into the movie, and has definitely started on the right foot.
The problem is, it’s the last time the movie will be this good or interesting. We get a flashback to see the audition scene where Kelly “stole,” Timothy’s part, and that’a it. After that, we never come back to this story again. It would have been nice to also get a flashback that showed us how Kelly stole Timothy’s girlfriend. That would have made for a far more interesting movie than what we got, and you would think it would have been obvious to do that, considering they teed it up so nicely, telling us about it.
But instead, the second half is about Kelly going to Europe, traveling on different trains, and boy is it boring. Even when he chases down a thief and recovers stolen property, the movie is afraid to make it exciting, telling us that the thief is crazy and suffering from mental problems, and shouldn’t be charged with anything. The Billy Crudup storyline is interesting and compelling, and then the movie pretty much drops it and moves on to a much less satisfying story. It’s a bone-headed move and it costs the movie deeply.