Star power can't save flawed Clooney flick Jay Kelly

Looking back on the big films of 2025, one thing is abundantly clear, the old Hollywood star system isn’t what it used to be. Of all the year’s hits, hardly any were particularly dependent on who was in them.

The few A-Listers in this year’s Top 20 list were subservient to the movie’s other elements.

Jurassic World featured Scarlett Johansson, and dinosaurs. F1 was as much Formula 1 cars as Brad Pitt. All right. I’ll make an exception for Tom Cruise in the final Mission Impossible. But these days even Cruise has to be in a familiar role, whether it’s Mission Impossible or Top Gun. This year, it seems, star status alone won’t guarantee a hit.

So why are traditional, star-led films failing? Were the films not up to scratch? Or are today’s stars somehow inferior to those of various, non-specific Golden Ages of our youth?

A film that seems to have it all going on star-wise is Jay Kelly with glamorous film star George Clooney playing a glamorous film star.

Jay Kelly, on paper, has an impressive pedigree. Everyone’s favourite old-school movie star, the debonair Clooney, is joined by – like it nor not – America’s most popular comedy star, Adam Sandler. The film is directed and co-written by Noah Baumbach, whose last film was one of the biggest hits ever, Barbie.

Jay Kelly harks back to Hollywood’s heyday, when movie stars like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant ruled the screens.

But what has Kelly sacrificed to reach these heady heights? When his younger daughter takes off for Europe, he realises he barely knows her.

His other daughter – not to mention various ex-wives and lovers – barely talk to him. His closest “friends” are his entourage – manager Ron, press agent Liz, security guys, stylists, gofers and the rest.

Jay Kelly decides to accept an invitation to an obscure European film festival tribute to him and use it as excuse to meet up with his daughter for some long-delayed family time.

But he can’t function without his “people”, who all have to drop everything and go with him. And, as part of his back-to-basics approach, he decides they will go by train.

Just like a classic 1940s screw-ball comedy. Preston Sturges’s rather superior Sullivan’s Travels, which followed another Hollywood big-shot going out in the world to find out what ordinary folk get up to for example.

But where Sullivan went incognito, Jay is more than happy to meet his public. Why wouldn’t he, they all love him. But do they love the real Jay Kelly, or just the films they remember him in, and the characters they grew up with? 

Ripping the phony tinsel and glitter away to reveal the tawdry shallowness of movie stardom isn’t exactly breaking new ground. Every couple of years Hollywood turns out a Hollywood movie that says pretty much the same thing.

But the gimmick here – of getting movie-star Clooney to play someone uncomfortably close to our idea of George Clooney – doesn’t help as much as writer-director Baumbach thinks.

The fact is, charming, decent and hard-working as, by all accounts, Clooney is, he’s not an actor with much of a range. He generally plays movie stars of one sort or another. If you want someone to provide any insight or ironies to that role, you probably should go elsewhere.

The film got an eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival - possibly influenced by the cast’s star-appeal on opening night.

Came the dawn, certainly back home in the States, the tinsel and glitter fell away pretty fast.