Jay Kelly — Montclair Film Festival Review

Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly is a mixed bag, oscillating between entertainment industry satire and dramatic character study. Sometimes the film feels self-indulgent, other times accessible and crowd-pleasing. It’s fitting that the film begins with the Sylvia Plath quote, “It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else, or nobody at all.” It’s a sentiment that’s echoed throughout the film when movie star Jay Kelly (George Clooney) responds to a question about how he always plays himself in movies with, “Do you know how difficult it is to be yourself? You try it." It’s fitting because Baumbach’s film feels like it’s having an identity crisis, unsure of what type of movie it wants to be or which direction to go in.