VIFF 2025 | George Clooney Pays Tribute to 'Jay Kelly'

"All my memories are movies."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2025—The unofficial Mayor of Hollywood, George Clooney, stars as an aging movie star contemplating his life and legacy in the movies away from his actual family in renowned dramatist Noah Baumbach's latest comedy, the unimaginatively titled Jay Kelly. Prepare yourself for a stage-like, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style look at past relationships where another successful, rich white man went wrong by alienating his loved ones, to only end up being surrounded by people he employs.

A-list actors Adam Sandler and Laura Dern give madcap supporting turns as Kelly's manager and publicist, bordering on parasocial close friends. Jay Kelly offers an amusing take on the strange nature of showbiz relationships, whereby the people you pay to make and keep you a star also feel like your closest companions despite the glaring power imbalance or inherent conflict of interest. Sandler steals every scene he's in by acting against type as the stressed-out, hardworking right-hand man incapable of letting his client/friend down even against his unreasonable demands.

Baumbach's penchant for interesting casting choices remains intact, most notably featuring a grey-haired Billy Crudup as an almost alternate version of who the title character could have been without stardom. After Clooney's Kelly goes through a personal reckoning, he revisits his strained relationships with his adult daughters, Riley Keough and Grace Edwards, who love but struggle to tolerate their father's abandonment and sudden need to reconnect.

Baumbach makes another screwball-type comedy reflecting on elements of his own experiences making films in the contemporary Hollywood system. Clooney, as an obvious vessel, both reflects the industry of fame and the legacy of cinema for good and ill. It's easily the director's most outwardly good-natured and sentimental film with mostly "real" characters acting out unreasonablly to great comic feffect.

Jay Kelly screened at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations series at the Vancouver Playhouse. It screens again at the VIFF Centre on 35mm film starting November 21st and at the 2025 Whistler Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations program on December 5th and 7th. It will be available to stream on Netflix also on December 5th.


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