If there is one thing Hollywood loves to do, it’s make films about how amazing it is to be American and how it is the best country in the world. We have seen this with the underestimation of Jefferson Smith’s determination to stick up for his community when appointed a position in the US Senate in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Gump’s historical escapades for his childhood sweetheart in Forrest Gump (1994) and Maverick’s determination to do the impossible in the name of the US airforce in Top Gun: Maverick (2022). During a time of political unrest and division in America, James L. Brooks dares to do the same, instilling patriotism in audiences through his latest film, Ella McCay (2025).
Emma Mackey is the titular Ella McCay, a hotshot lieutenant governor who is up for a promotion to governor. The classic do-gooder who was studious at school and works hard to be the voice for change in her state. Except, she is struggling to keep everything afloat with her absent father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson), returning into the picture, marital squabbles with her partner Ryan (Jack Lowden), and dealing with her brother Casey’s (Spike Fearn) self-esteem struggles.
Brooks tries to emulate the late 90s, early 2000s dramedy genre, aiming to make audiences laugh and feel uplifted. Unfortunately, it does neither. His writing often leaves viewers confounded, either by the unnatural turn of phrase or the convoluted nature of the story. For a writer and director as renowned as Brooks, it is shocking that the filmmaker behind acclaimed films like Terms of Endearment (1983) and Broadcast News (1987) can create a narrative so muddled. There were many moments when I felt the film’s runtime.
Part of what is to blame here are the threads upon threads of subplots that feel out of place, unresolved, or irrelevant. Whether it is Eddie’s sporadic, disingenuous interruptions asking for Ella’s forgiveness, Ray bickering with Ella, who is supposedly undervaluing him, Casey tackling his phobias to win back the girl of his dreams, Susan (Ayo Edebiri), and whatever Ella’s driver, Trooper (Kumail Nanjiani), is doing, there is simply too much going on. While I understand Brooks’ desire to explore how women are just expected to carry on without buckling under the mountains of pressure, he never provides a detailed enough exploration of each of her troubles, leaving them all to feel inconsequential and burdensome within the grand scheme of the storyline.
With that being said, there were glimpses of potential. The comedic rapport between Fearn and Edebiri leaned into the type of dry, awkward humour we have seen all too well in Bottoms (2023) and Napoleon Dynamite (2004), providing a lift of energy in an otherwise dull movie.
Similarly, there was a chuckle-worthy moment when Ray’s mother (Becky Ann Baker) was plotting her impressionable son against Ella, fulfilling the toxic mother-in-law stereotype.
The fundamental problem that Ella McCay suffers from is the lack of development and depth in the side characters to make their roles in the narrative meaningful. A waste of a star-studded supporting ensemble. It would have worked so much better as a sitcom, embodying the energy of a show like Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), which would give us time to really sit with the characters and buy into the absurdity.
The biggest saving grace the film offers is the relationship between Ella and her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis). Whenever the two are on screen together, you believe their mother-daughter adjacent dynamic and really feed off of one another when they are in scenes together, particularly with the physicality of their performances. The stability of the relationship grounds the narrative when, at times, it spirals. I would love to see them work together again!
Visually, the film offers very little, presenting itself as flat, unnaturally lit and safe, which is disappointing from cinematographer Robert Elswit, who has worked on beautifully shot films like Nightcrawler (2014) and There Will Be Blood (2007). Musically, the iconic Hans Zimmer offers a whimsical, Disney-like score that matches the uplifting tone the story desires, but does not scream out to me as being uniquely Zimmer, which feels like a waste. Not only was the stacked cast underutilized, but so was the stacked crew.
With Ella McCay, Brooks fails to create a story that is cohesive, engaging and most importantly, uplifting in an era of real pessimism and misery. It goes to show that no matter how acclaimed a director you are, no matter how star-studded a cast and crew you have, and no matter how well-intentioned your film can be, it can still not click into place.
Review Courtesy of Nandita Joshi
Feature Image Credit to 20th Century Studios