Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News are a pair of movies so good they leave an outsize impression on the directorial career of James L. Brooks. Brooks’s legacy in general is of course multi-faceted and highly secure -especially as the creator or producer of several of the most influential TV comedies of the last fifty-plus years. Specifically as a film director though he set the bar high, winning an Oscar on his debut movie. But it has been a long time since 1983, the film industry has changed dramatically. That was perhaps already apparent by 2010, when Brooks made his sixth film, How Do You Know, which was much more of a conventional romantic-comedy compared to usual tenor of his movies. Seemingly, he retired after that effort alongside one of its stars Jack Nicholson.
But now out of the blue, fifteen years later, he has returned with Ella McCay -a primarily political comedy, even more bizarre and out-of-step in its efforts to simultaneously capture some of Brooks’s former whip-smart magic while attempting to encapsulate an almost Frank Capra style of idealism in its subject matter. Brooks could not have known as he filmed it just how little craving there would be for that kind of a movie in 2025.
Certainly he must have suspected that on some level it wouldn’t fit in the current political climate because he sets the story in the halcyon days of 2008. Ella McCay, played by Emma Mackey, is the very young lieutenant-governor of an unspecified state, who is about to ascend to the office of governor due to her boss Bill (Albert Brooks) being granted a cabinet position in the new presidential administration. Impassioned, idealistic, and transparent, her legislative career soon runs into a scandal with the revelation she and her opportunistic husband Ryan (Jack Lowden) had sex in a government building -this colliding with other issues in her life including severe marital strain with Ryan, halfhearted efforts from her estranged father Eddie (Woody Harrelson) to reconnect, and concerns over the withdrawn behavior of her neurodivergent younger brother Casey (Spike Fearn).
Brooks chooses to keep the film’s contexts as non-specific as possible, likely believing the charm such an approach has on The Simpsons would translate. However, a movie with an explicit political framework is probably the worst space to keep details of place and political affiliation nebulous. The movie plays coy by never referencing political parties by name or even the presidential administration Bill is joining despite the time-stamp making it obvious. As an extension, vagueness manifests too in Ella’s policies and political acumen. She has one genuine proposal, birthed of a seemingly singular pop feminist issue, and a ton of empty rhetoric. To some degree she is drawn as an amalgam of figures from the new progressive left in the U.S., like Jasmine Crockett or AOC. But Brooks's interpretation of that movement is entirely bland in this personification, lacking a set of convictions or any of the real firebrand energy we see from those real women politicians in particular.
And each storyline that his movie contends with feels unbelievably mild. It is a script of an earlier time certainly -the scandal that Ella essentially brings on herself due to her commitment to honesty- feels incredibly tame and devoid of tension. Yet we are meant to believe it will tank her career. Both Ryan and Eddie are very thin archetypes, only accentuating the blisteringly obvious obligation for Ella to cut them out. And Casey's story is almost wholly disconnected with anything else going on -the movie stops in its tracks at one point to follow his effort to win back his ex-girlfriend played by Ayo Edebiri. It is a very strange section of the film, a touch patronizing towards Casey's autism and with a highly obligatory outcome that isn't developed in the slightest. Though not given his own storyline, Kumail Nanjiani's driver Nash is similarly inconsequential -with the minor suggestion he might be a rival love interest to Ryan for Ella, though ultimately consigned to simply being a receptor for her in a couple scenes arbitrarily set in her limo.
These highly variant sides of the movie might have been justified in some manner if they were integrated more cleverly, instead of feeling like a bunch of scenes and bits thrown in to pad out the runtime or because Brooks had nowhere else to put them. His script is full of those traits as well, obvious laugh lines that only a few of the cast can deliver with effectiveness. Hell, most of the jokes that appear in the trailer feel almost designed for those snippets -the set-ups rather laboured and inorganic. Efforts at emotional earnestness also fall flat, as the characters and conflicts don’t in any way relate authenticity. On that note, he makes use of a device that has worked okay in previous movies on a very small scale, but is much more pervasive through this film, and that is flashback sequences with no recasting. Brooks could be applauded for not using some kind of de-aging digital process but it doesn’t make the horrible make-up, costuming, and affect of the actors any more bearable. Mackey and Lowden do not look like teenagers -especially after we’ve already seen them in the working world. Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Ella’s bartender aunt raising her in the aftermath of her mother’s death, is entirely unconvincing in a brown wig meant to make her look like she did in Freaky Friday. It again feels like a choice that Brooks didn’t think through -it worked for him forty years ago, why should audiences be more discerning now. The material is not strong enough to distract from such a choice. The material is not strong enough to suspend even the mildest disbelief. It’s attempts at Capra-style whimsy and goodwill are utterly incompetent; its picture of a place and its people intentionally undefined is clumsy and empty. Brooks employs the cinematography of Robert Elswit (of six Paul Thomas Anderson films) and a score by Hans Zimmer, but it amounts to some of the least impressive work from either of them (Zimmer’s music in particular is cloyingly irritating). His former strength in capturing emotional conviction has no outlet here, and the bland production style wouldn’t suit it if it did. Of all the things to reach back for why not that warm visual presentation? The movie is indistinguishable from a commercial in places.
Ella McCay features very arbitrary and haphazard narration (and minuscule fourth wall breaks) from Julie Kavner (the voice of Marge Simpson), who also plays Ella’s secretary Estelle in her first on-screen role in about two decades. Clearly she is there as a favour to Brooks. And indeed, most of the cast and esteemed crew seem to be involved for similar reasons (though Albert Brooks also is a long-time friend). James L. Brooks is a legend, three of his now seven movies are widely considered classics. But without his name there is no way the film would have had this pull. It’s a real shame to see what are clearly some good intentions and important themes to the man executed so poorly -bland and saccharine and out of touch. A forgotten coda to a great career is perhaps the best fate for Ella McCay.
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