Ella McCay Review – James L. Brooks returns with a sorry movie | James L. Brooks

eNo McKay, a new comedy-drama written and directed by James L. Brooks, feels like a relic, and not just because it’s set, seemingly arbitrarily, in 2008. It’s broadly appealing, well-cast, and neither exactly comedic nor melodramatic, as far as regular people in non-IP circumstances are concerned, it’s the kind of mid-budget adult film that regularly appeared in theaters in the 1990s and early 2000s, before the streaming wars gobbled up the market. Even its main promotional image, transformed into a life-sized cardboard cutout in the theater — Emma Mackey’s Ella in a sensible trench coat, balancing on one foot as she fixes a broken heel — recalls a bygone era of films like Confessions of a Shopaholic, Miss Congeniality, or Little Miss Sunshine, which will now go straight to streaming.

To be clear, I miss these types of films, and I want to see more of them. I want to see a fun but realistic portrait of a 34-year-old woman serving as lieutenant governor of an unnamed state, which means, judging by the college football paraphernalia and vibe, probably Michigan. I want to keep believing in the possibility of smart, emotional popcorn whose low-stakes drama insists on the inherent contradictions and decency in people. I’d especially say that Ella McKay serves as an impressive last shot (or so) for Brooks, the 85-year-old writer/director/producer whose prolific career includes both popular sitcoms (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi and the Simpsons) and now-classic films (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets).

Unfortunately, I can’t say any of that, because Ella McCay is, first and foremost, a mess — a hackneyed collection of incoherent characters and a confusing plot that seems to defy basic story logic at every turn, and never in a surprising or interesting way. It’s never a good sign when the main character recites the literal definition of trauma, fingers tracing the dictionary, in the first five minutes of the film.

As told by Estelle (Julie Kavner), Ella’s secretary and the film’s narrator, this is supposedly the remarkable story of Ella McKay, a deeply intelligent and moral woman who overcame the shame of her cheating father (Woody Harrelson) and the shock (yes) of her mother’s untimely death (played, very briefly, by Rebecca Hall), to become one of the youngest political figures in her home state. But this narrative backbone quickly fades into strangely detached shadows preceded by a dissonant rhythm, as the film insists on tying each scene with a beautiful bow no matter how jarring it may seem to the conversation that preceded it. It would be amazing to watch a film that was so strangely and confusingly constructed, if it weren’t also so disappointing.

The mosaic of possible characters in the Ella-verse includes her beloved Aunt Helen, played by Jamie Lee Curtis in what feels like a pantomime of the Jamie Lee Curtis character. Her wayward father returned to make amends for selfish reasons; her husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), a local restaurant owner who supports Ella’s career, until suddenly, for no reason, he doesn’t (I have to assume a logical 45 minutes were cut from this nearly two-hour film); and her younger brother Casey (Spike Vern), an agoraphobic who is struggling with a breakup from Ayo Edebiri’s Susan, a classic awkward Edebiri character who would be cut for some time in any other film. There’s also Kumail Nanjiani as the friendly state trooper whose name might as well have been the Quippy Side character, and Albert Brooks as Governor Bill, who spouts political wisdom rants like “You gotta make stupid people feel less stupid.”

Eventually, it became clear that the film was about McKay’s time as governor for days in 2008, a time without Twitter or Trump, after Governor Bill left the Obama administration. How did this hugely ambitious and undeniably beautiful politician, the supposed Mrs. Jane Gray of Michigan, come to be briefly lifted from obscurity and brought down by forces largely beyond her control? Ella McCay doesn’t seem interested in telling you, instead stumbling through the story as if she were searching through a teenager’s messy room, pulling out and replacing random items in the pile.

It would be impossible for most actors to get past this mess, or play both roles 34 and 16 (in flashbacks). Although Mackey tries ably — my eyes lit up as she burst through a cannabis-charged rant, providing a very brief window into the frenetic inner monologue of a woman with a lot of liberal political ideas — she can’t sell a heroine whose distinctive personality traits are marked by volatility and engagement. This is unfortunate, as there is clearly something buried beneath the polished, inauthentic sheen of the film’s politicians. I saw a brief glimpse of it, late in the film, as Ella faces a choice between her morality and her marriage — a flash of raw, indescribable conflicting emotion, a hint of a better, thornier film. A second where you also wish it were different.