Looking at the arc of Noam Baumbach’s career, it’s been pretty fascinating to watch the evil boomer dads that headlined his scripts in The Squid & The Whale and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, evolve into the petty, emotionally manipulative, mini-toxic dads of Marriage Story and now Jay Kelly. (The Meyerowitz Stories of course gives equal time to both generations, which is why it’s Baumbach’s best and most transitional film.) Baumbach has an ounce of sympathy for these younger, more self-pitying figures, and gives them more time to explain their neurosis, even if they’re doing damage in equal measure. The problematic father figure is the key to realizing that this is much more of a Baumbach movie than it is a George Clooney movie. Clooney plays the titular Jay Kelly, a beloved, world-famous movie star, now in his sixties, feeling very retrospective about the work-life imbalance that has come to define his life. The film is being marketed as a referendum on Clooney, but the truth is something a tad more interesting.

Baumbach has always been plagued by claims of autobiography in all his movies, especially by those who look to belittle his work, and accuse him of remodeling himself in fiction to make up for his shortcomings in real life. I don’t care how true it is or not that Baumbach is riffing on his own life. His best films are tremendous works about New York aesthetes who learn that intellectual pursuits cannot compensate for emotional unintelligence. Jay Kelly isn’t about that. It’s about an aging star coasting on past glory who begins to worry that it was all for not. It all begins when his friend, filmmaker Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), passes away. It was Peter who gave Jay his big break in the movies, that propelled him to stardom. After the service, Jay runs into an old classmate, Timothy (Billy Crudup). It was Timothy who was auditioning for the part in Peter’s film, but it was Jay who won the director over. Being a footnote in Jay’s origins has not sat well with Timothy, and he lets his frustrations be known.

The run-in with his former friend brings unwanted reminders of his strained relationship with his oldest daughter, Jessica (Riley Keough), who’s moved to San Diego and started a new life that intentionally does not involve her absentee father. Then there’s his younger daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), who’s turning eighteen. She’s less neglected, sure, but she’s ready to embrace her own adulthood without the father who’s always had one foot out the door. Having just finished one movie and now on the verge of starting another, Jay is feeling the approach of an emotional crisis. He decides to drop out of the movie and travel to Europe where Daisy is spending time with friends. There’s a Tuscan film society looking to give Jay a career tribute, and he decides to attend with entourage in tow. This includes his dedicated assistant, Ron (Adam Sandler), his embittered publicist, Liz (Laura Dern), a flighty hairstylist named Candy (Emily Mortimer), among many others. Quitting the movie is career suicide for a figure whose popularity is already in decline. The whole team joins Jay hoping to change his mind, but he only becomes more determined once overseas.

The film is filled with Bergmanesque flashbacks, as Jay wanders from present day into the scenes of his past. These aren’t memories, per se, but reflections rendered through the cinematic machinations of his mind. Even his attempts at accountability are processed through self-serving dramatic interludes where he admits guilt while luxuriating in the majesty of his former glory. Less glamorous are his memories with Jessica, including a moment with an ostentatious psychiatrist (Josh Hamilton), who looks to turn the screws on Jay’s lack of presence. Jay frequently disappoints himself and others as he relives these moments, and his psychological wanderings suggest a level of subconscious reflection that is struggling to make it to the surface. This holding back makes life difficult not only for his daughters, but his entire entourage, especially the overstretched Ron

Ron’s commitment to Jay has forced him to miss many moments within his own family, though his abandonments are more often played for humor. He’s still married to his wife, Lois (Greta Gerwig), and makes attempts to be a present father in the few windows that he has. Ron doesn’t have an addiction to fame like Jay, but he does have an addiction to Jay, and that co-dependency colors his entire life. Sandler has done enough to prove he’s a good actor, even if he prefers the creature comforts of his lazy, crude Happy Madison productions. Sandler’s brilliance is unquestionable in offbeat films like Punch-Drunk Love and Uncut Gems, but Baumbach is the only director who’s been able to really get Sandler in the zone in a more straight, middlebrow dramatic role. This doesn’t touch the best performances of Sandler’s career, but it is a wonderfully melancholy portrayal of a man who enables the very thing that makes his life chaos.

The ultimate irony of Jay Kelly is how little the character of Jay actually reflects George Clooney’s own sweeping movie star career. Clooney didn’t have children until he was already in his fifties, and while it’s safe to assume his ego is aplenty, there’s no reason to believe Clooney is the clinical narcissist that Kelly is. So, in this way, this makes the performance from Clooney that much more interesting. He’s not leaning into his own legend as much as it may seem, but actually creating a character unlike himself. The downside of that is how much the film requires the Clooney connection for proper emotional impact. In the film’s conclusion, a tribute package draws upon Clooney’s own successes but the effect is neutered because it doesn’t feel like a montage of the Jay Kelly that we’ve spent the previous two hours with. Baumbach is trying to toast a very specific, long lost movie star here, but by running it through his own oedipal fixations, the nostalgia feels too muted to really get behind.

The result is a comedy-drama that feels just comedic and just dramatic enough that you don’t feel cheated. The softening of Baumbach isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but Jay Kelly is about as sentimental as it gets. The robust cast, in which no part is too small for a name actor, adds to the grandeur that the movie never quite achieves. Still, it’s nice to see George Clooney do some real acting again. It feels like it’s been quite a long time. And his chemistry with Sandler is a welcome surprise. One can’t help but mention the Netflix of it all; a studio on the precipice of media domination which has made no secret of wanting to diminish (if not destroy) theatrical windows. This ode to movie stardom will be experienced by most (including me) by people on their couch in between text messages and bathroom breaks. It’s a curse of awards season that this perfectly fine film will be labeled a disappointment based on the time of year it was released, but I’d argue that the streaming-adjacent release didn’t help matters either.

Directed by Noah Baumbach