The Reel Review
A rising young politician faces a major crisis when her dysfunctional personal life wrecks her career just days after becoming governor. Emma Mackey (Sex Education, Death on the Nile), Jamie Lee Curtis and Woody Harrelson star in this political dramedy from legendary writer/director James L. Brooks.
Although it does have a handful of cute and even touching moments, this film from the creator such iconic films as Broadcast News, As Good as it Gets and Terms of Endearment and such TV series as Mary Tyler Moore, Taxi and The Simpsons, is shockingly and aggressively terrible. The screenplay is filled with unlikable characters and scenes that are more cringeworthy than funny. The title character is a well-meaning but inept hot mess, her father (Harrelson) a loathsome womanizer who cheated on her mother (Rebecca Hall) when she was dying of cancer, her brother a socially-awkward agoraphobic, and her husband a lazy lout who rides her career coattails. The story is contrived, corny and wreaks of inauthenticity.
As expected, Brooks’ impressive reputation lands him a winsome cast that in addition to a solid Mackey and an always good Jamie Lee Curtis as Ella’s aunt, includes Julie Kavner (Marge from The Simpsons) and Albert Brooks (Broadcast News) in supporting roles. But even they are unable to save this dated, tonally awkward, cringeworthy disaster. It might be time to take away Brooks’ filmmaking keys.
REEL FACTS
• Ella McCay is director James L. Brooks’ first feature film since 2010’s How Do You Know.
• 85-year-old James L. Brooks, the founder of Gracie Films, has won three Oscars (all for Terms of Endearment) and 22 Emmys for Mary Tyler Moore, Taxi, Lou Grant, The Tracey Ullman Show and The Simpsons.
• Ella McCay was filmed in Providence, Rhode Island.
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