"Everybody loves George Clooney, and rightly so. His performances in films such as Michael Clayton, Out of Sight and Ocean's Eleven have been a joy, and as an elegant public figure he has more or less single-handedly underwritten the continuing currency of Hollywood classiness. But in this dire, sentimental and self-indulgent film, he has the look of a man who has found strychnine in his Nespresso pod and can't remember which of the cupboards in his luxury hotel suite contains the antidote."
"It is directed by Noah Baumbach, whose 2022 film White Noise, based on the Don DeLillo novel, was a superb competition entry at Venice. But this one is a grisly, sucrose, sub-Fellini swoon on the subject of a super-handsome Hollywood actor attending a Italian arts festival to accept a lifetime achievement award, and naturally experiencing endless bittersweet flashbacks to his youth, in which the middle aged Jay Kelly looks on, with that knowing Clooney smile."
George Clooney plays Jay Kelly, a super-handsome, middle-aged Hollywood actor attending an Italian arts festival to accept a lifetime achievement award. He experiences bittersweet flashbacks to his youth and navigates midlife regret, estranged relationships, and looming betrayals. Kelly seeks reconnection with a teenage daughter backpacking through Europe, rides humble trains, and encounters a hyperactive German cyclist. He contemplates betraying his agent Ron and refuses help to his directorial mentor. Memories surface of stealing a key role from a drama-school friend whose career declined. The film's tone blends sweetness, sentimentality, and sub-Fellini flourishes into a self-indulgent swoon.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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