It sucks when a filmmaker you really respect, in the twilight of their career, seems to have completely lost what made them great. James L. Brooks has co-created some of the best sitcoms of all-time, including The Simpsons, and been writer/director on some straight-up classic movies including Broadcast News, Terms of Endearment, and As Good As It Gets. I even have some fondness for Spanglish and the performances of Adam Sandler and Paz Vega. However, Brooks really crapped the bed in 2010 with How Do You Know, effectively ending Jack Nicholson’s career, and now he’s back fifteen years later with Ella McCay, which would’ve felt like a relic if it had been released a lifetime ago.
Nothing about Ella McCay is genuine, not the comedy, its politics, the performances. Everything is dreadful and dusty as Hell, like Brooks found a script from thirty years ago buried in the back of a desk and somehow got it greenlit. Emma Mackey, an intensely gifted comedy and dramatic actress probably best known for her role in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, plays 34-year-old Lieutenant Governor Ella McCay. She’s a complete Hollywood creation; someone who has the kind of “Aw shucks” positivity and naivete that makes it impossible to believe she could be at the right hand of Governor Bill (Albert Brooks), a cynical political animal. When Bill accepts a position in the Cabinet, suddenly Ella finds herself thrust into the role of Governor, and she ain’t ready. Not only do the politicos hate her because she’s apparently too smart and too much of a Girl Scout who actually wants to accomplish things, but Ella has to deal with her insecure husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), an agoraphobic little brother (Spike Fearn), and her estranged father Eddie (Woody Harrelson), who has suddenly come back into her life. On the plus side, she’s got her faithful Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), who always knows what to say at the right time.
The warning signals begin flashing that Ella McCay might be awful when we are introduced to Julie Kavner (the voice of Marge Simpson) as the film’s narrator, Estelle. As Ella’s loyal assistant, Estelle admits she’s hardly a neutral narrator, but she really only seems to be there to explain what Brooks’ overwritten script still manages to miss. Brooks’ scripts have always featured characters who say too much to get across very little, but it’s a problem that has aged very poorly. In an early sequence, a young Ella stops in the middle of an intervention with her philandering father to look up the word “trauma” in the dictionary for her brother, and it’s a sequence that goes on forever with nary a single laugh. Is it even supposed to be funny? I’m not sure.
Ella is so cartoonishly “good” that the scandals set to destroy her administration don’t even feel like real scandals. She temporarily freaks out after eating some weed cookies and her reaction is complete bullshit, like Brooks has never seen someone high ever in his life. Ella also has to grapple with her husband, who is a complete jerk but also supposedly the love of her life. They get in trouble for using a Congressional suite for “marital relations”, which even in the year 2008 (when the movie is set) would last one 24-hour news cycle before going away. Ryan is so transparently awful that it undermines the idea that Ella is so perceptive and so smart. Ella’s Dad is a horndog who cheats on his wife (Rebecca Hall) so much he even does it at her funeral. Ella’s brother Casey is a creep who is obsessed with winning back his ex (Ayo Edibiri in a TERRIBLE performance), and creepily stalks her down in a reunion scene that Brooks, perhaps showing his age, plays like it’s a happily ever after fairy tale.
Coming away with no career blemishes are Jamie Lee Curtis and Albert Brooks, two veterans who can pretty much survive anything. I found Curtis to be pretty fun as Helen fiercely defends her niece, pointing out what a douche Ryan is and even standing up to Governor Bill when he gets a bit bullying. Brooks is an old hand at playing stubborn blowhards such as Bill, and he manages to make him at least a little bit endearing.
Brooks will always be considered one of the greats, but I have to say that Ella McCay is so bad it’s made me want to revisit some of his earlier classics to see if they hold up. I get it. It’s tough to turn away someone with the reputation that Brooks has earned, but someone should have found the courage to do it in this case.
Ella McCay is open in theaters now.
