It’s been 15 years since“Terms of Endearment,” “Broadcast News” and “As Good As It Gets” writer/director James L. Brooks made a new movie, which to be fair is 14 1/2 years longer than it took us all to forget his 2010 rom-com flop “How Do You Know.” That film starred Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, and Jack Nicholson, and Nicholson hasn’t been in a movie since.“How Do You Know” not only bombed like nobody’s business, it took one of cinema’s greatest actors with it.
“Ella McCay” should, by all rights, be a step up for James L. Brooks. Instead it steps off a train platform, onto the tracks. Brooks became an icon with earnest dramedies about earnest people making earnest mistakes but “Ella McCay” never feels sincere. It’s a collection of condescending ideas and mannerisms, unconvincingly presented as if it has a meaningful story and plausible characters. What it says about these people is generic. What it says about politics is trite, and a little insulting.
“Ella McCay” stars Emma Mackey, and yes, her real name is spelled only slightly differently. It would be amusing if the movie were better, but it’s not, so it’s just odd. Ella is the Lt. Governor of an unnamed state, but we know the year is 2008 and the Governor, played by Albert Brooks, has just been nominated Secretary of the Interior. Which should mean Brooks is playing Ken Salazar, from the great state of Colorado, except Salazar was never a governor, so I guess we’re just in Fantasy Land. Maybe James L. Brooks thought no one would Google that. He was wrong, but then “Ella McCay” is wrong about a lot of things.
Ella McCay is an idealistic dreamer, with big policy ideas and zero charisma. This is not a critique of Emma Mackey’s performance — she’s actually quite good — it’s literally the plot. Ella would rather help her constituents than fundraise or glad-hand, which dooms her in American politics. She doesn’t even want to get good at this stuff, because making compromises leads, at best, to incremental change. She’d rather actually change the world for the better, and the other politicians hate that, even in her own party.
Ella is married to a local pizza magnate, Ryan (Jack Lowden), who sucks. Everyone knows Ryan sucks. Even Ella kinda knows he sucks. When she becomes governor, Ryan makes bad decisions that jeopardize her political future. Meanwhile, her deadbeat dad Eddie (Woody Harrelson) is back in town, trying to make amends, and doing it badly. Ella’s brother Casey (Spike Fearn) is a recluse who can’t get over his ex-girlfriend. Her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) is nice, but that just means she has nothing to do in this film. So Ella spends too much time dealing with her family’s problems and not enough time doing her job. And when she does do her job, again, everyone hates her for it.
“Ella McCay” is a film about American politics in the same way that Pixar’s “Cars” is a movie about cars. As in yes, these are definitely films about politics and cars. But no, politics and cars don’t work like that. It’s a flighty approach to the material, all quirkiness and no jerkiness, where the biggest problem politicians have on a daily basis is going to a long meeting — once — and scandals that never pass the smell test.
Brooks is so committed to making “Ella McCay” sweet that he neglects the bitterness that should make it pop. The imbalance, ironically, only makes the film bitterer. The ugliness Brooks ignores just festers in the corners, eventually creeping in where it doesn’t belong. “Ella McCay’s” big idea for a political victory is indistinguishable from failure, drizzled with a condescending finger-wag at any idealistic, prospective young politicians in the audience, who don’t yet know their place, I guess. It’s only progressive if you want the world to get slightly better, only for now, only for some people, and if you don’t mind if it completely implodes further down the line.
The implausibility of “Ella McCay” goes beyond politics. The characters are unbelievable. (There’s a way to read that last sentence which makes it sound like a compliment. Don’t read it that way.) There’s one hard heel turn that unconvincingly defies a very long flashback to the contrary. Meanwhile, Ella’s brother has a storyline so awkward and contrived, it’s how I imagine an extra-terrestrial would write a rom-com after only hearing about the concept. Once. Casey’s big scene with his ex-girlfriend Susan, played by Ayo Edebiri, ends so weirdly that even the movie admits it makes no sense, but whatever. I guess wrapping the subplot up quickly was more important than wrapping it well.
There’s a big line in “Ella McCay” where someone says, matter-of-factly, to the audience, as if they were making an important point, that the word “trauma” has no opposite. Uh… it’s “healing.” You can look it up in a dictionary. I even asked a professional therapist and she says “catharsis” would also be a perfectly good answer. So actually there are two opposites, and that’s “Ella McCay” in a nutshell. It makes big proclamations about life, love and politics that sound like they mean something, but none of it holds up to any scrutiny.
I wish I could McSay this was a return to form for James L. Brooks. But I just McCan’t.
“Ella McCay” opens exclusively in theaters on Dec. 12
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