JAY KELLY

Directed by: Noah BaumbachStarring: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura DernCertificate: 15Released: 14 NovemberRating: 8/10

Even though he’s been making movies for over 30 years, George Clooney sometimes feels like a simulation of a classic Hollywood icon, with such charm, glamour and ease in a dinner jacket that you might overlook a filmography that still feels a little insubstantial - do the Ocean’s Eleven films really qualify him as a 21st century Clark Gable or Cary Grant? 

As such he’s perfect casting as Jay Kelly, a beloved leading man who feels like a phantom, looking back over his life from his mid-60s and wondering what it all amounts to. He has wealth, acclaim and an attentive entourage catering to his every whim - but is there anything of substance? When his mentor dies he finds himself suddenly searching for something real to hold on to, but there’s no wife or partner and no real friends. He’s estranged from his grown-up eldest daughter, so when his teenage younger daughter heads off to interrail around Europe he takes into his head to tag along behind her, to have one real bonding experience before it’s too late.

The younger Baumbach might have served up a scalpel sharp satire of boomer entitlement, parental neglect and gen z disaffection, or even some bittersweet Bergmanesque stardust memories. But the director seems to have mellowed a little in own maturity, and what follows is a breezy dream of road and rail through France and Italy, with all the gritty realism of a Paddington movie. But somehow, such is Clooney’s charm, it works as an unabashedly sentimental hymn to makeshift showbiz families.