Grace Edwards | Bouquets & Brickbats

17/01/01

Netflix

Our Netflix catch-up continues with this whimsical and charming film from Noah Baumbach, clearly influenced by Federico Fellini’s 8½. George Clooney stars as the titular Mr Kelly, a handsome and successful movie star, now forced to contemplate the highs and lows of his career and personal life – and the things he could perhaps have handled better. With his latest film wrapped, Jay has been looking forward to spending time with his daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), but she tells him she’s heading off to France with friends.

Then veteran film director, Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), the man who gave Jay his first break, unexpectedly dies. After the funeral, Jay bumps into an old college-mate, Timothy (Billy Crudup), and goes for a drink with him – where events take an unexpected turn.

Feeling the need to make himself scarce for a while, Jay instructs his long-suffering manager, Ron (Adam Sandler), to accept an offer on his behalf for a trip to Tuscany to attend a career-tribute award. This is awkward, because Jay has already told them that he’s not interested in attending the event and the trophy has been promised to Jay’s main rival, Ben Alcock (Patrick Wilson). But Ron has spent most of his life dealing with Jay’s unpredictable impulses and manages to persuade the organisers to forge a second statuette, to make it a joint celebration. Jay, Ron and publicist Liz (Laura Dern) set off for Italy, along with a whole entourage of followers.

On the journey, Jay has time to contemplate key events from his past – actually stepping through a series of doors, to revisit them as they happen. It soon becomes apparent that success as a film star comes at a high price. When everyone around you has a stake in your success – even the ever-faithful Ron is taking 15% of everything Jay earns – it’s hard to trust anyone.

And as the prize-giving ceremony looms ever closer, it begins to dawn on Jay that he is in danger of having nobody to share the moment with.

Clooney is the perfect choice for this role – there’s always been something distinctly old-fashioned about his rugged, matinee idol looks – and a final scene where he contemplates different versions of himself from his own stellar career is nicely handled. The film also features some lovely insider details: the shooting of a love scene with Charlie Rowe standing in as the younger JK, reveals how clinical an exercise it is and how the magic is created. Baumbach’s screenplay (co-written with Emily Mortimer) is witty and insightful, while Linus Sandgren’s gorgeous cinematography gives the film a dazzling, sun-drenched sheen.

Some reviewers have been dismissive of Jay Kelly, but Clooney inhabits the lead role with absolute authority. It’s hard to imagine who might have made a better fit. There have been rumours that this could be his final role as an actor (lately he’s been more interested in being on the other side of the camera). Should that prove to be the case, this would seem a fitting way to bow out.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

25/06/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

If you were ever looking for the film director equivalent of Marmite, Wes Anderson might just be your best bet. His detractors delight in pointing out that he always makes the same film, but that’s a ridiculous over-simplification. While I’d be the first to admit that his films do have an unmistakable look – that you can see one frame, taken at random from any one of his many features, and know instantly that it’s his work – we rarely make that complaint about artists who work with paint and canvas.

Asteroid City has all of the man’s familiar hallmarks: those sumptuous, vividly-coloured landscapes dotted with unlikely looking ramshackle buildings; a massive roster of A listers, all of them prepared to swallow their pride in return for delivering just a line or two of quirky dialogue; and that weird detachment from reality, those bizarre situations seemingly created to point up the artificiality of the whole undertaking. For me, these are the elements that confirm Anderson as a unique and brilliant filmmaker. But then, I’ve been a fan ever since Rushmore in 1998.

The film opens in stark black and white with an earnest narrator (played by Bryan Cranston) talking about the creation of a new play by hotshot writer, Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), and the play’s tortuous path to production – and then we cut to the full-colour, wide-screen film adaptation of the same story. War photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) arrives at the titular desert town with his son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), who is one of five gifted children invited to attend a ceremony where one of them will be presented with a prize for their latest invention.

Woodrow and his three little sisters have some devastating news to deal with first, but their father seems far more interested in the presence of screen actor, Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), who has her own gifted daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards), in tow. It’s not long before Dinah and Woodrow begin to develop an interest in each other…

But this is about as far as any rational plot outline can take us. From this point, madness ensues in the form of a group of singing cowboys, the aforementioned weird childhood inventions and a WTF alien visitation. And, as the tale enfolds, we are treated to regular visits back to the monochrome world of the original theatrical version, where we see the actors in the film actually being the actors and learning to handle their roles, whilst commenting on the artificiality of the whole experience. Meta? Well yes, but clearly that’s the point.

If this sounds hard to get your head around, don’t despair, because the sparky script by Anderson and Roman Coppola keeps the pot bubbling happily away as the story unfolds. I find myself laughing at the wonderful absurdity of some of the situations – and is the director making a comment on cinema’s general inability to handle theatrical material with any sense of conviction?

It’s heartening to see that a sizeable audience has come out for this on a rainy Sunday afternoon and also to read that Asteroid City has enjoyed a bigger opening weekend than the latest Transformers movie. Perhaps a lot more people out there are acquiring a taste for Marmite.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney