Film Review: Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach, 2025)

Even though it's his 13th feature, one can still say Baumbach has now made his own 8½.

Granted, Fellini's classic was an autobiographical look at a director having a crisis of creativity, and this film switches it to an actor having the same crisis, with George Clooney filling in for Mastroianni.

Yet, with the second half of the film taking place in Italy, complete with weird entourages wandering through the fields and villas and a cast of bizzare extras that make it seem like Fellini himself did the casting and Baumbach's creative use of flashbacks that seem to be coexisting with the present, this is so obviously inspired by Fellini. Hell, there's even a quick nod to Masroianni late in the film.

I'm not saying Baumbach's 13th film is his grand opus, nor is it on the level of 8½ (sorry Noah, but not much is) but it is a great character study that blurs real life with memory, both real and perceived, and Clooney hands in one of the finest and most heartfelt performances of his career.

Baumbach co-wrote the film with Emily Mortimer, who has a small role, as does Baumbach's wife Greta Gerwig (the director himself cameos as a film director at one point as well) and the cast is further stacked with the likes of Laura Dern, Riley Keough, Isla Fisher, Patrick Wilson, Stacey Keach, Jim Broadbent, and a wonderfully wry Adam Sandler, whose own family have cameos.

The film opens with a wonderful tracking shot shooting the movie within the movie and then closes with that meta-esque ending, blending real footage of Clooney's movies with scenes made for the film itself in a tribute to Clooney's titular Clooneyesque movie star in Baumbach's Felliniesque motion picture.