rating: 4.75/10
sorry, this movie reads pretentious to me. i had trouble connecting to jay's character coz let's be real, he's an egocentric asshole. he's selfish as fuck most of the time—it's always "i, me, my, myself" with him. any sympathy that the narrative tries to generate with him was lost on me. the only thing we know about jay kelly by the end of this is... nothing. some might say that was the point bcoz he certainly doesn't know himself either but i just find this to be redundant storytelling because we get nowhere with him. the fourth wall break at the end was interesting however it might've felt better if we liked jay as person at all. the narrative does not make the audience sympathise with him at all. jay is a caricature of himself and his true self is an enigma. laura dern's character was fun coz she's a cool actress but i was just not interested in whatever the fuck she had going on with ron. adam sandler's performance as ron is arguably the best part of this movie along with noah baumbach's direction and cinematography. the sets were so pretty and i especially loved what was happening with the lighting in the movie, especially in the train scenes where they played around with how the sunlight was captured in the frame. the italy sequences were super picturesque. riley keough was pretty good too—i like her as an actress, especially after seeing her prowess in Daisy Jones. but overall, not a strong movie. felt like a puff piece, awards season bait.
