{"id":13635,"date":"2025-12-16T23:13:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T04:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13635"},"modified":"2025-12-23T17:48:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T22:48:29","slug":"ella-mccay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/12\/16\/ella-mccay\/","title":{"rendered":"Ella McCay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Ella McCay<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century\/Comedy-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 115 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (strong language, some sexual material, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: James L. Brooks\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James L. Brooks\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Hans Zimmer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Elswit\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 12, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Lowden, Kumail Nanjiani, Ayo Edebiri, Julie Kavner, Spike Fearn, Rebecca Hall, Albert Brooks, Woody Harrelson, Becky Ann Baker, Erica McDermott, Sheetal Sheth.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0The new comedy-drama from writer-director James L. Brooks Ella McCay<\/strong> is the very definition of mediocrity. There\u2019s nothing to hate about it. There\u2019s nothing to like about it either. It\u2019s lightweight to the point of barely existing. It\u2019s just there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I approached Ella McCay<\/strong> the same way I open a new tube of toothpaste, with complete indifference. It has everything to do with the director. Brooks has a spotty track record. Of his six feature films, he\u2019s done one great one (As Good as It Gets), two good (Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News), two fair (I\u2019ll Do Anything and How Do You Know) and one terrible (Spanglish). It\u2019s been 15 years since the 85YO filmmaker\u2019s last movie (the instantly forgettable How Do You Know) and almost 30 since his last good one (As Good as It Gets). The trailer didn\u2019t fill me with a lot of confidence. Ella McCay<\/strong> didn\u2019t look awful, but it didn\u2019t look great either. It looked like a movie you might see on Lifetime on a weekday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are absolutely no surprises in Ella McCay<\/strong>. The title character, played by Emma Mackey (Sex Education), has a messy personal life. She\u2019s unhappily married to a selfish jerk named Ryan (Lowden, Fighting with My Family). Her estranged father Eddie (Harrelson, The People vs. Larry Flynt) wants to make amends for all his years of being a lousy dad. Her younger brother Casey (Fearn, Alien: Romulus) is a socially awkward recluse who hasn\u2019t left his apartment in over a year yet he insists he\u2019s not agoraphobic. Her only real familial support is the overbearing aunt (Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once) who took her in as a teen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Her professional life is slightly better. Ella is the lieutenant governor of her state (it\u2019s never named). She suddenly finds herself promoted to governor when her former boss (big brother Albert) resigns to accept a position in Obama\u2019s cabinet (the story is set in 2008). Ella isn\u2019t exactly well-liked by her colleagues. She\u2019s too pushy and ambitious. Her top priority is getting a bill passed that would benefit young mothers and their children. Unfortunately, she immediately finds herself at the center of a scandal involving misuse of a government-owned apartment. Naturally, not-too-bright Ryan is going to make it worse when he tries to \u201chelp\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Earlier, I used the term \u201cmessy\u201d to describe Ella\u2019s personal life. It could also describe the script. It\u2019s not so much a screenplay as it is a hodge-podge of plot threads hastily tied together. It\u2019s disjointed, underdeveloped and all over the place. Some subplots, like the one involving Casey wanting to reach out to a girlfriend (Edebiri, After the Hunt) he ghosted after an awkward conversation a year ago, are half-baked. It has serious tonal issues as well. Brooks can\u2019t decide if he\u2019s making a comedy, drama or political satire so he tries to do all three which makes for a noticeably uneven viewing experience. I didn\u2019t know what I watching half the time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The performances are similarly all over the place. Some, like Harrelson and Curtis (who gets all the best lines), act like they\u2019re in a completely different movie. Others, like Edebiri and Rebecca Hall (The Town) as Ella\u2019s mother, don\u2019t get enough screen time to establish their characters. That\u2019s one of the most frustrating things about Ella McCay<\/strong>. It has a strong supporting cast that also includes Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick) as Ella\u2019s head of security and Julie Kavner (The Simpsons) as Ella\u2019s personal assistant. Brooks doesn\u2019t take the time to develop their characters. Then there\u2019s Mackey in the lead. She comes off as a discount version of Anne Hathaway.<\/p>\n

\u00a0None of the characters feel real or relatable. Ella is the type of person who overcompensates in trying to fix things. It\u2019s the result of growing up in an unfixable family. She should have been an interesting and sympathetic protagonist; instead, she\u2019s ditzy and annoying. Plus, we only ever see Ella in crisis mode. I felt like I didn\u2019t get to know her at all. As such, why should I care if she ever gets her life together?<\/p>\n

\u00a0To be fair, not all of Ella McCay<\/strong> is wrong-headed. The relationship between Ella and her brother is sweet. She\u2019s always been protective of him and although he doesn\u2019t always love it, he loves her. The only aspect of this plot thread that falls flat is when she inadvertently gets stoned with him. It feels cribbed from a different, funnier movie. Other than that, this part of Ella McCay<\/strong> works a little better than the rest.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have no strong feelings about Ella McCay<\/strong> either way. It\u2019s just okay in every respect from the storylines to the generic music score by Hans Zimmer. In the end, it falls flat. It makes me wonder why Brooks bothered at all. It\u2019s not the kind of film that should draw a filmmaker out of retirement. Anybody could have made this movie. It\u2019s definitely not worth the price of admission. It\u2019s a streaming movie if ever there was one.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ella McCay (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century\/Comedy-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 115 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (strong language, some sexual material, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: James L. Brooks\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James L. Brooks\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Hans Zimmer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Elswit\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 12, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Lowden, Kumail Nanjiani, Ayo Edebiri, Julie Kavner, Spike Fearn, Rebecca Hall, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Ella-McCay-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C923&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13635"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13651,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13635\/revisions\/13651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}