During the awards campaign for Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler promised that if he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for the Safdie brothers film, he was going to come back and “Do one again that is so bad on purpose just to make you all pay. That’s how I get them.” Don’t make him do it again. Six years later, he’s back with a new awards vehicle, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, co-starring Oscar favorites George Clooney and Laura Dern.
Clooney leads as the titular Jay Kelly, a movie star who realizes how lonely his pursuit of acting has left him. So, he brings his manager Ron (Sandler) and the rest of his team on an impromptu trip with him to France. “When I look at you, I see my whole life!” his French fans fawn over him as he revisits his past. Looking out a train car window, he gets existential, “remembering things.” “It’s like a movie where I’m playing myself,” he confides in Ron.
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Ron’s not really buying the whole Eat, Pray, Love thing, apparently harboring some pent up issues with his boss. “I mean, you’re Jay Kelly, but I’m Jay Kelly, too,” he insists. A movie with previous Oscar winners, made by a prestige director, about Hollywood? That’s usually a recipe for success at the Academy Awards. Sandler might not have to cook up a bad movie this time.
