""Can we go again?" asks Jay Kelly (George Clooney), a movie star shooting a scene in which the tough guy he's playing dies of a gunshot wound on the soundstage reproduction of a rain-slicked alleyway. "I think I can do it better." These lines from the opening scene of Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly will become the film's wistful recurring theme."
"Even as a man not given to introspection (this stinging observation comes from Jay's long-ago acting teacher), the middle-age matinee idol finds himself thinking about mortality after the passing of his first mentor in the film business, a director played in flashback by the always wonderful Jim Broadbent. At the funeral, a figure from Jay's past emerges: his old acting-school rival Timothy (Billy Crudup, sensational in his show-stealing single scene), who offers Jay a not entirely welcome chance to revisit the ambitious and less than ethical young thespian he once was."
"But "many people" don't have a private jet and a full staff of housekeepers, chefs, stylists, and personal assistants at their command. Taking stock of your past mistakes is tough when everyone around you is busy protecting you from the consequences of mistakes you're still making in the present."
Jay Kelly is an A-list celebrity four decades into a phenomenally successful career who begins revisiting past choices. The death of his first mentor prompts thoughts of mortality and rekindles a rivalry with an old acting-school peer who tempts him to revisit his younger, less ethical self. Jay impulsively flies to Europe with his entourage under the pretext of accepting a lifetime achievement award but mainly to ambush his younger daughter on a pre-college trip. He also faces estrangement with an older daughter whose anger over his absence left them barely speaking. Staff and attendants shield him from consequences even as he seeks atonement.
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