George Clooney Reacts To His Worst-Reviewed Film Ever: "It Was Just A Disaster"

George Clooney has come a long way since his first film role as Ron in the low-budget horror movie Grizzly II: Revenge.

Speaking to ScreenRant’s Ash Crossan for Jay Kelly, the Oscar-winner recalled the excitement he felt upon scoring his first professional movie job. “I was 22 years old, and I thought, ‘Hey, man, this is going to be great!’”

Little did Clooney know that his introduction to the world of film acting would involve getting abandoned by financially challenged producers.

“It was my first gig, so I was just happy to have a job,” he relates. “Then we were stuck in Budapest, they ran out of money and left us there.”

The unfinished Grizzly II: Revenge proceeded to gather dust, and might have done so forever had Clooney’s later mega-star status not helped inspire the film’s production company to finally finish and release it, counting on Clooney’s name to sell the long-delayed horror effort.

Officially released in 2021 on VOD, Grizzly II was mauled by critics, and currently sits at 8% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of Clooney’s worst-reviewed films ever.

Clooney recalls finally seeing the long-delayed movie, which had been stitched together into something barely releasable. “They cut it with all this stock footage of bears and things,” Clooney says. “It was just a disaster.”

It’s a disaster that also happens to star Clooney’s fellow Oscar-winner Laura Dern, who like Clooney happens to be in the cast of Noah Baumbach’s latest film Jay Kelly, making the new movie a Grizzly II reunion.

Back together on-screen over forty years after the experience of dying in the early moments of a terrible B-movie about a vengeful bear, Clooney and Dern had occasion to recall, and chuckle about, their youthful acting gig.

As Clooney relates, “Laura and I were laughing about this the other day, saying, ‘We’re getting bad reviews for something we did 40 years ago.’” He adds, “Laura was like 15, we get killed in the opening scene, and it’s like ‘Starring Laura and George!’“

The undeniably stacked cast of Grizzly II: Revenge also includes Charlie Sheen, Oscar-winner Louise Fletcher (giving the film three Academy Award-winning stars), an uncredited Timothy Spall of Harry Potter fame, and John Rhys-Davies of Lord of the Rings and Raiders of the Lost Ark fame.

It’s almost as amazing a roster of actors as is boasted by Jay Kelly, which in addition to Clooney and Dern, features the likes of Adam Sandler, Greta Gerwig, Riley Keough, Isla Fisher, Eve Hewson, Patrick Wilson, and Stacy Keach.

Clooney’s latest boasts a 79% Rotten Tomatoes score, indicating generally favorable reviews. Jay Kelly entered limited theatrical release on November 14, and premieres on Netflix on December 5.