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Jay Kelly Critic Reviews
67
Metascore Generally Favorable
positive
30 (61%)
mixed
18 (37%)
negative
1 (2%)
Showing 49 Critic Reviews
Aug 28, 2025
As a filmmaker, Baumbach is sharp enough to call out the clichés of his trade, but also generous enough to put them to good use anyway.
Sep 1, 2025
Baumbach is making his Fellini film, and it’s a joy to watch. There are funny, recurring jokes involving cheesecake and a lonely man never being alone. There are heartfelt, regretful scenes that nearly always involve Sandler, this film’s co-MVP with Crudup. And Clooney is doing both sides of what he does best.
Nov 13, 2025
Jay Kelly is Baumbach’s best film and, from an artistic standpoint, his first complete success.
Nov 14, 2025
Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s funniest and finest movie in many years is perfection all the way through: the perfect casting choice, the perfect balance of comedy and pathos, the perfect wacky route to the perfect ending.
Dec 5, 2025
This film has the conversational dexterity and comedy of early Woody Allen films, the sadness of Lost in Translation, and the appealingly self-referential celebrity heft of Notting Hill. It is Baumbach, Sandler and Clooney at the top of their games, in a game where the audience is very much invited to play.
Nov 18, 2025
Baumbach and Clooney have crafted a character who comes to realize his mistakes, many of which simply can’t be undone. Jay Kelly, the movie star, may be in the process of figuring himself out, but “Jay Kelly” the movie arrives as a fully-formed knockout.
Nov 18, 2025
Could the movie have hit harder at the self-involved stars we often worship? Of course. But what makes it powerful is not the Hollywood drama. This is a movie for any of us who have missed a child’s school recital, asked an assistant to work late or skipped a family dinner because a client was running behind. It’s about time. It’s about where we choose to spend our time.
Nov 19, 2025
Jay Kelly would make a good double feature with “Sentimental Value,” another film about a driven moviemaker seen from the perspective of the daughters, not the father. I think this film is the better of the two, even if it is more conventional in its storytelling.
Dec 3, 2025
It's Clooney's most poignant role in some time, and one he was bred, if not born, to play.
Aug 28, 2025
It is Clooney, of course, that anchors and crowns this dramedy milimetrically envisioned to tug at the hearts of cinephiles (and, for the sake of addressing the elephant in the Netflix room, awards voters).
