Ella McCay
Written and directed by James L. Brooks
Starring Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis and Julie Kavner
Classification PG; 115 minutes
Opens in theatres Dec. 12
Jamie Lee Curtis, playing Ella’s nurturing aunt, can pull off the outrageously funny and tender moments that director Brooks is always aiming for.20th Century Studios/The Associated Press
Imagine Lisa Simpson all grown up and disillusioned. That’s essentially who Ella McCay, the eponymous young congresswoman anchoring James L. Brooks’s kooky and twee dramedy, turns out to be. I’m not just saying that because Brooks happens to be the producer behind The Simpsons (the iconic shush from the Gracie Films logo appears before this film); or because the first voice we hear, a narrator pouring out her affection for Ella, is none other than Marge Simpson (or rather the animated matriarch’s voice Julie Kavner, who appears here as Ella’s doting secretary, Estelle).
Ella, played by Emma Mackey, is a keener ready to carry the world on her perky and naive shoulders, fighting for health policy that’s considerate of women’s struggles. But she’s having a hard time getting all the Neanderthals around her on the same wavelength.
Lisa had to deal with Homer and Bart. Ella’s got a few of those hanging around, not just in her dysfunctional family, but also in Congress, back around the time of the 2008 recession. Kavner’s Estelle calls it a better time because “we all still liked each other.” It’s also a time when this movie, which feels like a leftover story thread from Love Actually had been left to curdle, might have been more readily embraced.
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Donald Trump isn’t in office yet. The internet has yet to exploit our polarizing online culture. Those might have been less cynical times, but the constant between then and now is the dismissive attitude toward a young idealistic woman in politics. Even Ella’s own husband, resentful about who’s wearing the pants in the relationship, suggests that he should co-govern with her – a gag literally recycled from a flash-forward in The Simpsons, when Bart storms into the White House and tells Lisa he could be co-president.
Ella’s husband (Jack Lowden) figures he could help her win people over, since she’s too socially awkward and rigid. These are personality traits that Brooks immediately hangs on her trauma, which stems from having a serial cheater as a father (Woody Harrelson), who never made up for repeatedly disrespecting her late and tragically tolerant mother (Rebecca Hall). In a flashback laying out these psychological fractures, a teenage Ella takes time out from confronting her parents to actually look up the dictionary definition for “trauma,” as if the core audience for a Brooks movie needed a cute little primer.
These scenes tend to be cringe because Brooks overshoots what he can get away with. He uses silly gags as an escape latch to dramatic moments that he can’t handle in genuine or meaningful ways – a recurring issue throughout the movie. And it doesn’t help that poor Emma Mackey is tasked in these flashbacks (which, according to the movie’s timeline, would take place in the nineties) with playing her character as a wise-beyond-her-years child. The model for her performance appears to be, yet again, Lisa Simpson, with little consideration for the lapse between cartoon and live-action (not to mention the age gap between performer and character).
Albert Brooks and Emma Mackey in a scene from Ella McCay.20th Century Studios/The Associated Press
Still, there’s something endearing about Ella McCay, specifically Brooks’s chaotic stab at retrofitting characters from his wheelhouse for today’s audience; and his refusal to retire the kind of movies that used to score him Oscar nominations (Broadcast News, As Good as It Gets). Ella McCay, the movie, feels like we’re being bear hugged by a lovable, slightly boozy old grand-uncle who genuinely hopes to find common ground with a new generation, but also can’t help being a little patronizing.
There are some golden nuggets in his bag. “To get anything done you have to make dumb people feel less dumb,” says Albert Brooks (no relation), playing a warm benefactor trying to advise Ella on how to play the game. Such simple and appreciated wisdoms don’t feel as forced as so much of the broad comedy and big emotional displays this movie builds around them (often at the same time), which is the stuff the younger cast especially struggle with.
Scenes shared between Mackey and Kumail Nanjiani, as her police escort, or Ella’s brother Casey (Spike Fearn) and his ex-girlfriend (Ayo Edebiri) are embarrassingly artificial. But then there’s veterans like Jamie Lee Curtis, playing Ella’s nurturing aunt, who knows her way around Brooks’s tempo, and can pull off the outrageously funny and tender moments that he’s always aiming for. We could use more moments like that, if only they came with better movies.