Some people read reviews to decide whether to watch a movie. Others read after watching, wanting to sort out what they’ve just experienced. If you’re in the latter category, and you’ve just seen “Ella McCay,” I am here with reassurances: Don’t worry. Your movie theater wasn’t leaking gas.
No, “Ella McCay,” written and directed by the venerable James L. Brooks, is just a real baffler of a movie, the sort where you repeatedly wonder if you somehow dozed off briefly. I’m not saying it’s charmless! I’m just trying to prepare you. This is one weird flick.
In some ways, “Ella McCay” is a vintage Brooks movie, centering on a hyper-competent young woman in a man’s world who encounters a number of irritating roadblocks, mostly in the form of people who resent her capabilities. In this way it most closely resembles “Broadcast News,” Brooks’s terrific 1987 comedy about TV journalists, with the crackerjack producer Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) at its center.
But this time the drama is on the other side of the media-government divide. The titular Ella (Emma Mackey) is a doe-eyed 34-year-old who has managed to become lieutenant governor of her unnamed state, the protégée of the man everyone calls, apparently without irony, “Governor Bill” (Albert Brooks). He’s pragmatic and experienced; she’s idealistic and whip-smart, full of policy ideas. That makes her annoying to the whole government, because as we all know, everybody hates the person who makes them see their own lack of preparation or virtue or both. But regardless, they’ve made a good team.
Now, though, beloved Governor Bill is getting called up to a cabinet position in the new president’s administration — it’s 2008 in this movie, for some reason. And that means big things for Ms. McCay.
I don’t want to sketch out too much of the plot for you, because the greatest pleasure of “Ella McCay” comes in feeling your eyebrows inch slowly up your forehead as the narrative beats grow ever more inexplicable. The main things to know are that we learn, in awkwardly de-aged flashbacks, that Ella’s nonexistent relationship with her father (Woody Harrelson) is thanks to his persistent and indiscriminate philandering, which wounded her long-suffering mother (Rebecca Hall); that Ella spent the end of high school living with her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), who also owns and runs the local tavern; and that her brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), is a bit of an agoraphobe, maybe.
Also, she’s married to her high school sweetheart, Ryan (Jack Lowden), a local businessman. They have been sneaking off to have “marital relations” during her lunch hour in order to keep their union strong. But apparently, this constitutes a scandal, because it’s been taking place in an apartment that is on government property. This is enough for a journalist to threaten blackmail, which could sink Ella’s career just as it’s on the cusp of taking real flight.
I know! That doesn’t strike me as scandalous either. That seems like the kind of thing that gets you elected and hailed as a paragon of virtue, with just a hint of spice for good measure.
But “Ella McCay” takes place in an alternate universe, one with very strange rules about various everyday things, like what to wear to bed, and the propriety of racking up overtime hours to support your family, and how girls actually want to be asked out. In this universe, Ella’s secretary, Estelle (Julie Kavner), informs us at the start, 2008 was a time when we all still liked each other. In this universe, putting water in your pizza sauce is a mortal sin, indicative of deep soul rot.
Watching “Ella McCay,” you get the feeling that this screenplay has gone through many iterations over many years — and indeed, Brooks’s last film, “How Do You Know,” came out 15 years ago. Characters seem like good people and then suddenly they’re bad people, with no indication that we’ve missed something nor, curiously, that they are three-dimensional. Characters go on weird little tangents and rants that seem like setups for something later, but never are; people occasionally seem like they might be referencing something that happened earlier, but that thing didn’t happen. Sometimes it just seems like the rhythm is off, like the whole thing would work better if everyone was talking at the speed of, say, a screwball comedy, or “Gilmore Girls,” or even “Broadcast News.”
There’s a certain joy to this madness, if you just surrender to it. What “Ella McCay” demonstrates best is the power that an artist like Brooks wields. At 85, the TV legend who was a creator of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Taxi” and “The Simpsons” — not to mention the director of “Terms of Endearment” and “As Good As It Gets” — can still pull incredible talent to work with him. In addition to the cast, “Ella McCay” boasts the cinematographer Robert Elswit, who won an Oscar for shooting “There Will Be Blood,” and it’s Brooks’s fifth collaboration with the composer Hans Zimmer, who has Oscars for scoring “The Lion King” and “Dune.” When you’re a legend, people want to work with you.
None of that makes the movie good, but it does make it kind of interesting. You can see a little bit of DNA from some of Brooks’s characters — Jane from “Broadcast News,” yes, but even a little of Mary Tyler Moore — in what Ella is supposed to be. Nothing about her or the movie around her really works, but the anachronism is revealing anyhow. “Ella McCay” is a bizarre movie that would have worked better if it went all-in as an homage to another era. Since we won’t get to see that version, you’ll just have to buckle up and enjoy the very strange ride.
Ella McCay Rated PG-13 for some chatter about sexual activities and a little language. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters.
Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005.
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