QUICK HIT: Jay Kelly [2025]

December 4, 2025

1–2 minutes

Rating: R | Runtime: 132 minutes
Release Date: November 14th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Netflix
Director(s): Noah Baumbach
Writer(s): Noah Baumbach & Emily Mortimer

Pieces of time.

In the immortal words of Charles Dickens: “Jay Kelly was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Ron Sukenick’s daughter, whose swollen feet finally went back to normal, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as good old Hollywood knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

This was actually quite sweet. Very sentimental. Very inside baseball to the industry and Noah Baumbach’s penchant for airing his own regrets through it. Very close to being one of his clunkers wherein his horrible characters demand our pity rather than just amuse us with their horribleness. If I cared one iota for Jay (or Ron before his three-decades-too-late epiphany), I might have really liked this.

Instead I will just admit that it had it’s moments. Josh Hamilton crying so Riley Keough wouldn’t need to cry was comedic gold. The cheese cake and Giovanni Zeqireya’s Silvano always appearing when the words “you’re not alone” are spoken were delightful. And Alba Rohrwacher really didn’t need to go that hard (she’s never not giving a performance 110%).

Maybe the lesson of A Christmas Carol isn’t to give bad people the room to be redeemed. Maybe it’s to realize you’re better off without them.