ELLA MCCAY Review: James L. Brooks' First Film in 15 Years Flounders, Stumbles, Flops

After an indifferent critical and commercial response to his 2010 effort as writer-director, the long memory-holed How Do You Know, James L. Brooks (As Good As It Gets, Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News), a three-time Academy Award and 22-time Emmy Award winner, all but retired from feature-length filmmaking, focusing his remaining energies on the long-running The Simpsons show (35 years and counting).

 

Based on the evidence of the 85-year-old writer-director's latest, possibly final, feature-length film, Ella McCay, an ill-timed, ill-conceived comedy-drama set in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 presidential election, Brooks' self-imposed hiatus, while far from short-lived, should have remained unchanged. It's a sad, disappointing conclusion to an otherwise illustrious, culture-redefining one, certainly, but the only logical one too.

 

Ella McCay turns on the credulity-straining ascension of the 34-year-old title character (Emma Mackey), a super-smart, socially challenged policy wonk who, through a combination of contrivances, coincidences, and circumstances Brooks stubbornly refuses to explain, sits uncomfortably in the Lt. Governor’s office of a small, unnamed, Northeastern state that unmistakably looks like Rhode Island (where it was filmed). Said small, unnamed, Northeastern state was — until minutes into Ella McCay — led by the vaguely liberal, consensus-obsessed Governor Bill (Albert Brooks, no relation to the writer-director). 

 

Vastly unprepared for taking on the governor’s duties, Ella seems content drafting legislation that her boss halfheartedly supports. After Barack Obama wins the presidential election in the fall of 2008, however, Governor Bill agrees to join his cabinet as Secretary of the Interior, leaving Ella as the new governor, a development her self-centered, egotistical husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), takes as a sign from the Lord above (and his mother below) to elevate his role from vestigial appendage to the power behind the office.

 

Almost simultaneously, Ella finds herself in a difficult spot with her fame-hungry, attention-seeking husband and his increasingly me-first behavior. A slew of unresolved personal problems also reappear at exactly the worst possible time: Her wayward, womanizing father, Eddie (Woody Hareslon), wants a long-delayed reconciliation, less to rebuild their long damaged relationship than for purely selfish reasons (i.e., a new relationship), while her agoraphobic brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), brilliant like his sister, but far more socially challenged and mentally scattered than his older sister, stops answering his sister’s calls, leaving an overprotective Ella concerned for his safety and well-being.

 

Just as Ella’s personal problems threaten to sidetrack her professional career, a scandal linked to a feckless Ryan and a super-secret room in the Governor’s mansion inserts itself into the public and political conversation, threatening to irrevocably derail Ella’s governorship mere weeks or even days after it began on a positively upbeat note. (Note: Said personal-professional scandal might have briefly derailed a first-time governor’s career in 2008; in 2025, it would be met with a shoulder shrug by cynical consumers of corporate, mainstream media.) 

 

For no discernible reason, Brooks inserts Ella’s executive assistant, Estelle (Julie Kavner, The Simpsons), as the fourth-wall-breaking, onscreen narrator, haphazardly stepping into — and often stopping — the film to drop a nugget of well-worn wisdom with the audience on the other side of the screen. Ella’s aunt, Helen (Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis), shares a near-identical support role with Estelle, making at least one or both characters surplus to narrative requirements. Simply put, Helen’s role should have been absorbed into Estelle’s and/or vice versa. 

 

Despite a talented, award-nominated cast, their next-level efforts, both individually and collectively, fail to elevate cringeworthy dialogue, stale situation comedy set-ups, or painfully predictable resolutions to otherwise negligible conflicts. Ayo Edebiri appears in an extended late-film cameo as Susan, the object of Spike’s seemingly unhealthy romantic fixation. Except oddly, it’s not a dealbreaker.

 

The verbal gymnastics Susan and Casey share in their tangential subplot will convince even the most generous Brooks’ fan to throw their figurative and literal hands in the air and simply give up. Everyone else should, too.

 

Ella McKay opens Friday, December 12, only in movie theaters, via 20th Century Studios. Visit their official site for more information.