Noah Baumbach’s new dramedy isn’t breaking new ground, but it’s a charming, wistful take on what lies beneath the myth of celebrity. As the daughter of a devoted E.R fan, my childhood feels inextricably tied to the beatific face of one George Timothy Clooney. Sundays spent boring holes into the walls of the church hall while a peppy youth leader tried to instil the fear of God into me failed to have the same impact as Wednesday nights illuminated by the glow of the television, rapt by the horrors unfolding at Chicago’s Hope Hospital. By the time I saw Ocean’s 11 Clooney had achieved a sort of deity status in my young mind. I am by no means unique in this manner; even some years after the last bona fide Clooney home-run (his supporting role in the Coen Brothers’ underrated Hail, Caesar!), he commands a certain level of affection from the public at large, tied in no small part to his largely right-on politics, refreshing self-awareness, omnipotent coffee endorsement deals and undeniable love of the game. Such is his charisma and cache, both Hollywood and the public have even tolerated his largely unremarkable ventures behind the camera.Jay Kelly – Noah Baumbach's thirteenth fiction feature, co-written with actress Emily Mortimer – isn’t about George Clooney, but it's not not about George Clooney. If their names sound similar, and they’re both corn-fed country boys who made it to the big leagues only to worry they’ve gone to seed in their twilight years, that’s...well. Maybe it's not entirely a coincidence. Just as LA has played itself for decades, here one of Tinseltown’s golden boys gets his own 8½ moment, with Baumbach joining the league of filmmakers enamoured enough with the magic of movie making to get all metatextual about it.With a short break between shooting films, Kelly finds himself at a loose end. Much to his dismay, the younger of his two daughters is headed on a trip to Italy before she leaves for college; the elder wants nothing to do with him; his work seems less-and-less fulfilling, and when the death of an old friend and a disastrous run-in with a former acting classmate occur in quick successful, he decides it’s time for a change of scene. Cue the Hollywood hijinks as Kelly and his inflated entourage embark on a European interrailing adventure, ostensibly so Kelly can be honoured at an Italian film festival, but in reality so he can tail his daughter and her friends in a comically misguided attempt at parental bonding. While Kelly reckons with his own personal failings – occasionally detailed in flashbacks filling out his path to stardom – his crew have problems of their own. His manager Ron is constantly on the phone to his incredibly understanding wife Lois (Greta Gerwig) as she deals with their own familial crisis, while Kelly's publicist Liz (Laura Dern) frantically tries to ensure her client's unscheduled holiday doesn't put him in breach of contract. A hive of other personnel – assistants, make-up artists, stylists, security – buzz around Kelly, who professes to want freedom but doesn't seem to have the first clue what he'd do with it. Yet it's easy to see why all these people remain in his orbit; Kelly is effortlessly charming and frustratingly good at getting his own way.The freewheeling train ride across Italy sees Kelly meet a bizarre array of bumbling European stereotypes (Jamie Demetriou and Patsy Ferran's flustered British tourists among the more egregious) but finds its emotional core in the relationship between the star and his long-suffering manager. The long-suffering Ron has sacrificed much of his personal and professional happiness to be at his employer's beck and call, and Sandler's gentle hangdog aura is a pleasant foil to Clooney's star-wattage, as well as a study in contrasts between two indisputable Hollywood heavyweights. But the weight of this core relationship and novel question of how one finds personal meaning in a life defined by transactions veers scattershot in places, as easily diverted and prone to flights of fancy as Kelly himself. Kelly's regrets – chiefly being an absent father and a bad friend – are hardly groundbreaking, particularly within the context of a Noah Baumbach movie. So much of the film leans on the dramatic heft that Clooney, Sandler and the spirited supporting cast are able to bring to the table. (It's a crying shame there’s not more of Gerwig, on fine form as a gently frazzled LA mum juggling a neurotic teenager and a toddler with preternatural comedic timing.)It’s a testament to the smartness of this casting that Jay Kelly works as well as it does, even if the echos of Hollywood mythmaking are unavoidable. Perhaps that's part of it; "All my memories are movies" Kelly remarks, and a charitable reading suggests the most cloyingly sentimental and obvious moments of Baumbach and Mortimer's script merely reflect their protagonist's crisis of confidence, as he searches to find himself the only way he knows how: through tropes, takes and tableaus. Depending on one's appetite for affectionate ruminations on the fragility of the male ego among society's most exalted, your mileage may vary.Then there's the Clooney of it all. In press before the film's ritzy Venice Film Festival premiere, Clooney professed to not "give a shit" if people think he only ever plays himself (Jay Kelly seems to be powerful evidence to support his statement). There's no separating the art from the artist in this instance; the very construct of Clooney as The American Movie Star is so tied into Jay Kelly it feels difficult to imagine the film being as charming as it is with anyone but Clooney in the central role. (If a comparable American figure exists, it's Tom Cruise, who presumably swore off any remotely interesting or left-field roles after Tropic Thunder.) In fact, when Kelly finally makes it to the big film festival award ceremony and a highlight reel plays clips from his filmography, naturally it's a montage of Clooney's career that we see. As he gazes up at his own visage ageing before his eyes, a movie mythology in motion, it's impossible to tell if we're watching Clooney or Kelly or the strange liminal space where the two meet, inextricable from one another and forever immortal on the silver screen. The post Jay Kelly – first-look review first appeared on Little White Lies.