movie review
ELLA MCCAY
Running time: 115 minutes. Rated PG-13 (strong language, some sexual material and drug content). In theaters.
In the pantheon of James L. Brooks films, “Ella McCay” is far from as good as it gets.
That the ingenious and idiosyncratic Oscar winner, who wrote and directed “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment” and helped develop “The Simpsons,” has churned out a movie as cloying and empty-headed as this dud is extremely depressing. Even after his last flop, 2010’s lacking “How Do You Know,” it’s still a huge disappointment.
My kingdom for a “Spanglish”!
I hoped Brooks, who I greatly admire, would deliver a pleasantly old-fashioned comedy coursing with intellect and textured performances. D’oh!
This sloppy slog is terrible; short, but interminable. The characters? Unserious, unconvincing cartoons. Except Homer Simpson is a pillar of nuance next to most of the sputtering fools of “Ella McCay.”
At least there’s Ella, the closest the film comes to a real, likable person, thanks to a charismatic performance from beaming Brit Emma Mackey.
Her story on the other hand…
She’s the 34-year-old lieutenant governor of an unnamed state who’s spent her life in its leafy capital city.
Sweet and idealistic though she is, you can hardly believe Ella is a powerful politician on the rise. She makes Zohran look like Churchill.
When her boss, Gov. Bill Moore (a blandly paternal Albert Brooks), gets a post in the Obama administration, Ella unexpectedly ascends to the top job. She’s a young Kathy Hochul, only without the #MeToo boost up the ladder.
That would make a jaunty premise for someone like Aaron Sorkin, who writes with a keen knowledge of the inner workings of politics.
Hollywood unsurprisingly doesn’t make a lot of gubernatorial movies. So, some actual insight into this specific world would be nice. Brooks’ half-tries with jokes about the peculiarities of fundraising, but they fall flat.
The details-be-damned director dumbs it down, and gives Ella a midseason sitcom home life to caulk the cracks. She’s been estranged from her womanizing dad, Eddie (Woody Harrelson, doing his thing), for 13 years, and was raised by her batty diner-owner aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) after her mom died.
They bicker and freak out, and then freak out and bicker.
Curtis has really gone loco since “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Here the “Freakier Friday” actress behaves as if she’s in a Broadway musical. She exaggeratedly shouts and flails her arms like Tarzan’s baking a casserole.
Some of the glass shattering volume is\ in the script. There is a cliched scene in which Helen and Ella do a primal scream to release their pent-up frustrations.
Sounds good. Too bad me yelling in a movie theater would incite a mass panic.
Ella’s little brother Casey (Spike Fearn) works with computers and is lonely. He meets a girl named Susan (Ayo Edebiri), and then becomes less lonely. Why should we care? Beats me.
The young gov also has a dishy boyfriend named Ryan (Jack Lowden) that her aunt disapproves of and whose undependability turns into nastiness. A stupid mistake made by Ella involving her beau and “wrongful use of government property” threatens to destroy her days-old governorship.
That shredder-worthy twist is when the viewer totally gives up on the plot.
The boneheaded present is broken up by predictable scenes from Ella’s cheesy past: The tragedy of her mom’s passing and her teenage rebellion of sneaking Ryan into her bedroom.
All of this sap is scored by Hans Zimmer with the bittersweet orchestral music of a kid named Billy biking around a cul de sac in 1998.
Other than luminous Mackey, the saving grace of the movie is Julie Kavner as Ella’s secretary — and the movie’s narrator — Estelle.
Kavner has made a number of films over the years, but is best known for her TV roles: Brenda on “Rhoda” and the voice of Marge on “The Simpsons.” Believe me, she lives rent-free in your head.
Kavner wholly embodies a heartfelt Brooksian weirdness, like Holly Hunter habitually sobbing in “Broadcast News.” You buy her bizarre behavior, no questions asked.
Other than a familiar and beloved Brooks player and a smart female protagonist whose stressful personal life gets in the way of her demanding career, it’s hard to make out the “As Good As It Gets” director here.
“Ella McCay” is like if “Welcome to Mooseport” had the nerve to tell you to cry.
