Ella McCay, 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. Broadly appealing, well cast, neither strictly comic nor melodramatic, concerning ordinary people in non-IP circumstances, it’s the type of mid-budget adult film that used to appear regularly in cinemas in the 90s and aughts, before the streaming wars devoured the market. Even its lead promotional image, turned into a life-size cardboard cut-out at the theater – Emma Mackey’s titular Ella in a sensible trench coat, balancing on one foot as she fixes a broken block heel – recalls a bygone era of films like Confessions of a Shopaholic, Miss Congeniality or Little Miss Sunshine, that would now go straight to streaming.
To be clear, I miss these types of movies, and want to see more of them. I want to see a lighthearted but realistic portrait of a 34-year-old woman serving as lieutenant governor of an unnamed state that is, judging by the college football paraphernalia and the vibe, probably Michigan. I want to still believe in the possibility of smart and sentimental popcorn fare whose low-stakes drama insists on the inherent inconsistencies and decency of people. I especially would like to say that Ella McCay is an admirable final salvo (or so) for Brooks, the 85-year-old writer/director/producer whose prolific career includes both iconic sitcoms (The Mary Tyler Moore show, Taxi and the Simpsons), and now-classic films (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets).
Unfortunately, I cannot say any of that, as Ella McCay is, first and foremost, a mess – a clunky collection of incoherent characters and confounding plot that seem to defy basic story logic at every turn, and not in a surprising or intriguing way. It’s never a good sign when the lead character reads the literal definition for trauma, finger tracing the dictionary, in the first five minutes of a movie.
As told by Estelle (Julie Kavner), Ella’s secretary and the film’s narrator, this is supposedly the story of the remarkable Ella McCay, a highly intelligent and moral woman who overcame the shame of a philandering father (Woody Harrelson) and the trauma (yes) of her mother’s untimely death (she’s played, too briefly, by Rebecca Hall), to become one of the youngest political fixtures of her home state. But that narrative spine frays quickly into strangely disconnected tangents that precede at a jarring rhythm, as the film insists on tying each scene into a sweet bow no matter how incongruous to the conversation preceding it. It would be transfixing, to watch a film so oddly and awkwardly constructed, if it weren’t also so disappointing.
The would-be mosaic of characters in the Ella-verse include her beloved Aunt Helen, played by Jamie Lee Curtis in what feels like a pantomime of a hammy Jamie Lee Curtis character; her prodigal father, returned to make amends for selfish reasons; her husband Ryan (Jack Lowden), a local restaurateur who is supportive of Ella’s career until, suddenly and without reason, he isn’t (I have to assume there were 45 sense-making minutes cut from this nearly two-hour film); and her younger brother Casey (Spike Fearn), an agoraphobic quant reeling from a breakup with Ayo Edebiri’s Susan, a classic awkward Edebiri character who in any other movie would be cut for time. Also, there’s Kumail Nanjiani as the friendly state trooper whose name may as well be Quippy Side Character, and Albert Brooks as Governor Bill, dispensing such clanging political wisdom as “you have to make dumb people feel less dumb”.
Eventually, it becomes apparent that the film concerns McCay’s days-long stint as governor in 2008, a time conveniently without Twitter or Trump, after Governor Bill leaves for the Obama administration. How did this highly ambitious, undeniably beautiful policy wonk become the Lady Jane Grey of presumably Michigan, briefly lifted from obscurity and felled by forces largely outside her control? Ella McCay doesn’t seem that interested in telling you, instead stumbling about the story as if rummaging through a teenager’s unkempt room, pulling and replacing random objects on the pile.
It would be impossible for most actors to rise above such disarray, or to play both 34 and 16 (in flashbacks). Though Mackey ably tries – my eyes lit up when she blisters through a cannabis-inflected rant, providing a too-brief window into the frantic inner monologue of a woman with a lot of liberal policy ideas – she can’t sell a heroine whose defining character traits are wonkish-ness and reactivity. Which is a shame, as there’s clearly something here, buried beneath the polished, inauthentic sheen of the movie politician. I saw a brief flash of it, late in the film, as Ella faces a choice between her morals and her marriage – a flicker of tough, contradictory and ineffable feelings, a hint of a better, thornier, lived-in movie. A second where she, too, wishes it were different.
