“Jay Kelly”: Stars in Their Eyes

I recently heard a sweet story involving a weather delay at a small airport somewhere in the northwest. For various complex reasons, the passengers suddenly had to rely on ground transportation to get to where they were going. What made all the difference was the fact that one of the passengers was the actor Keanu Reeves. Charmingly self-effacing, he befriended his fellow travelers and used his clout to hire the bus that got them all to their destinations. When they finally parted, they felt they had been personally blessed by this close proximity to stardom.

 That’s part of what being a movie star is about: having an appeal that reaches beyond the screen and makes average citizens feel they have a personal relationship with someone who is magic. There’s a similar sort of moment in the new Noah Baumbach film, Jay Kelly. In it George Clooney plays a world-famous leading man who seems (on the surface, at least) a whole lot like George Clooney. The episode begins on a European train on which Kelly, instantly recognizable by all the other passengers, charms them with self-deprecating humor. Then a disturbed man grabs the pocketbook of a nice old lady, stops the train, and runs off into the Italian countryside. Without a second’s hesitation, Kelly shifts into heroic mode, as he’s doubtless done in countless popular flicks. He leaps from the train and pursues the thief, finally emerging triumphant with the errant purse, to the huzzahs of all the other passengers. That’s the upside of being famous.

 Baumbach’s film (co-written by the talented British actress Emily Mortimer) shows us the downside too: the toll stardom takes on one’s family life, as well as the skewed sense of self that develops when the star is always encircled by a fawning entourage. The film certainly conveys the difficulties faced when an ageing celebrity is no longer so clear about his path forward, and we do feel a certain sympathy for a nice-guy leading man who’s starting to be tired of the usual clamor of expectations. But I found myself (as various critics groups have done) even more interested in the hangers-on who pay a price for their loyalty to the great man. The second lead in this film is played by Adam Sandler as Ron Sukenick, Jay’s long-time manager. He’s a guy who puts family obligations (and pretty much everything else) second to his duties as Jay’s companion, fixer, office wife, and general factotum. Yes, he’s even been known to touch up the star’s greying temples, with needed. Now he’s left his own kids at home with an increasingly resentful wife (played by Baumbach’s own wife, Greta Gerwig) while he and Jay schlepp around Europe to attend a gala tribute event that Jay had previously turned down, but then mercurially changed his mind about at the very last minute. Sandler, who’s long since graduated from the childish comedies that first made his reputation, has already won some performance awards for this role, and I suspect there’ll be more.

The movie’s certainly a reflection on the price of stardom. And non-stardom: there’s a small but important subplot about the young Jay’s talented buddy who, through the kind of fluke with which the film industry is rife, never gets the chance to move ahead in his career. This is not Baumbach’s best film: its time-jumps and on-the-nose plotting detract from the kind of tightly-focused artistry he generally brings to projects like Marriage Story and The Squid and the Whale. Still, even if it doesn’t reach the starry heights, this is a film worth pondering.