Jason Bailey
Ella McCay is the kind of terrible movie that can only be made by someone who was once capable of greatness — because those previous masterpieces are the only possible explanation for why a studio greenlit it, or why a cast of gifted actors agreed to appear in it. Those decisions certainly weren’t motivated by James L. Brooks’s screenplay, a dire collection of unmotivated events, inexplicable detours, and unbelievable characters. You simply cannot convince me that a single person involved read this script and thought, This is gonna be amazing! I can only surmise that they put it aside, all or even partway through, and sighed, “Well, maybe Terms of Endearment’s script wasn’t that great either.”
Emma Mackey stars as the title character, a young and idealistic lieutenant governor who is written like Holly Hunter’s Broadcast News character, without the wit or nuance. (Both her party affiliation and her state are pointedly and often clumsily not mentioned, for no discernible reason other than to be cute.) The supporting cast is awfully impressive: Julie Kavner as her assistant and our to-the-camera narrator; Rebecca Hall as the late mother and Woody Harrelson as her estranged father; Jamie Lee Curtis as the boisterous aunt; Albert Brooks as the governor she serves, and whose appointment to a Cabinet position means she’s about to take over his office.
That Cabinet position is under Obama, by the way, and it’s noteworthy that Brooks, wanting to tell a story of a young politician, had to set in in 2008, and not one second later. (Even then, Kavner’s narration frames this period as “back when we all still liked each other” and um citation needed!) Not that the writer/director seems to have done much investigation into the logistics of state government; at one point, for example, our heroine is told “Your approval rating’s up 20%” approximately an hour after a potential scandal breaks. Quick polling!
Brooks has been off his game for a while now; this is his first film in 15 years, since the unfortunate How Do You Know (which was preceded by the equally unfortunate Spanglish). He’s spent that time producing, specifically the very good The Edge of Seventeen and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret for the talented Kelly Freamon Craig; I’d sort of assumed he’d retired from making his own movies to pay it forward, and based on Ella McCay, he should’ve. His once unimpeachable ear for smart, quotable dialogue appears to have left him for good, and he seems to have even lost his sense of screenplay construction. The narrative stops for so many detail-shading flashbacks that he keeps blowing the momentum (these feel like things he and his actors should know, but that we don’t necessarily need to see), and the entire thing is worrisomely unfocused, full of odd little sidebars that don’t come close to paying off (why do I know the backstory of a guy on her security detail who I’ve never seen before and will never see again?) and characters, like Ella’s handsome but dim husband (Jack Lowden) and his mother (Becky Ann Baker) who veer into caricatured villainy without any plausible explanation.
He does manage to rub up against some real truth and emotion in a couple of scenes between Ella and her brother (Spike Fearn), but Brooks decides his emotional arc must be pursued as well, resulting in a numblingly painful scene that brings in poor Ayo Edebiri as his ex-girlfriend. She has nothing to play and no possible way to put it across, because it’s an impossible scene — impossible in its conception, execution, and certainly in its outcome. In the face of these moments, Hans Zimmer can’t do anything with his cutesy, plinky little score but smother, attempting to spackle over the whiplash-inducing tonal shifts by underlining the emotional intention of every beat (FUNNY! SAD! etc.)
Mackey is innocent — she’s very good, even when Brooks leaves her adrift — as is Albert Brooks, who is (as ever) an absolute pro, nailing the laughs in even the weakest dialogue. (He does deliver one great, memorable line of political advice: “To get anything done, you have to make dumb people feel less dumb.”) And Harrelson does similar miracles with his nothing-burger of a role; he has one moment, in which he must deliver the line “Not… really…”, that’s actually both funny and informative about the character. But these performances seem less the result of any particular direction than their skill as actors, since they’re delivering them alongside the straight-up mugging of Curtis and Kavner.
There are no hard, fast rules for when a director should throw in the towel, despite Quentin Tarantino’s insistence otherwise; Martin Scorsese is making some of the best work of his life right now, and he’s only two years Brooks’s junior. But at a certain point, some artists lose their fastball, and just can’t get it back. If you saw either of his previous pictures, you likely suspect that this is the case with James L. Brooks, and I can assure you that you don’t need to seek out this one for confirmation. You could just stay home and watch Broadcast News, currently streaming on Hulu. Trust me, you’ll have a much better time.
D+
“Ella McCay” is in theaters this weekend.
