Directed By James L. Brooks

Starring – Emma Mackey, Woody Harrelson, Jamie Lee Curtis

The Plot – An idealistic young woman (Mackey) juggles her family and work life in a comedy about the people you love and how to survive them.

Rated PG-13 for strong adult language, some sexual material and drug content

Ella McCay | Official Trailer | In Theaters December 12

POSITIVES

For his first feature length directing effort in fifteen years, Brooks has decided to exploit his ability to flesh out humbling humanity in the form of many complexly flawed adult characters, and while this familiar creative impulse ultimately and unfortunately keeps him from capitalizing on a complimenting evolution as a filmmaker, it does conjure a couple of fascinating dynamics in and around its titular protagonist, that helps to alleviate some of the inferiorities of his underwhelming execution, particularly those involving immediate family members, which I wish more of the film gravitated towards. Such examples pertain not only to Ella’s intimately trusting and revitalizing relationship with her Aunt Helen (Played by Jamie Lee Curtis), which feels more like a motherly bond than a typical auntie outsider, as well as a naturalistic sibling chemistry with her brother Casey (Played by Spike Fearn), which stand as the balance of heart in the movie’s favor, that at least keeps it digestible at its abrasive pace, especially in opening up Ella towards feeling like the inspiring force of nature that Brooks so desperately illustrates her as. If the film delved more into the complexities of a broken home and finding inspiration in the life-struggling hurdles, without the battle for time from a political subplot, then I think it could’ve flourished more of a heart-tugging engagement that played particularly well around the holidays, but even on its own the impeccable comedic timing and fiery registry of Curtis combined with the cerebral chemistry between Mackey and Fearn, conjured the greatest qualities about the experiences with the film, serving as a momentary glance into the film that we could’ve got if rustiness towards inconsistency didn’t continuously plague Brooks’ out of touch direction. On top of this, the film is also a story of two halves, with the superior first hour of the movie opting for more of the aforementioned comedic underlining that appraised a couple of noteworthy laughs as a result of the ensemble’s caustic sensibilities that make the most of monotonous material. While there was never really a time when “Ella McCay” competed with some of the best films of the year, that first half did at least maintain my vested interests in the explorations of the past coming back to haunt the present, and with so many wild card characters acting through the unresolved scars of this family’s conflicts, it utilizes the grounded honesty and fearlessness that Brooks has made a career articulating, helping the audience to see as much of themselves in the characters, regardless of their wealth or commanding careers, proving that everybody hurts in the same kind of ways that universally bind us.

NEGATIVES

Unfortunately, the pleasantries end there, as “Ella McCay” is an incoherently cluttered and callously tone deaf engagement that grows all the more tediously uninteresting with each passing minute, leaving Brooks abandoning his comedic competence for a dramatic plunging that lacks any of the hard-hitting emotionality to taste triumph with characters who are so tragically uninvesting. This is especially the case for the titular protagonist, as not only does Mackey feel tragically miscast in the role of Ella, with too much emphasis on her brash and unforgiving personality eviscerating the empathetic qualities of her capture, but also how the character is outlined with the kind of compromisingly imposing presence that alienates and imposes so many of her peers, and in a narrative continuously pushing how great of a person Ella is to those surrounding her crazily unpredictable life, the firsthand evidence never cooperates with the affection of Julie Kavner’s overhead narration, proving plenty of problems for a film that asks us to spend so much time alongside someone who has trouble even conveying vulnerability to the interpretation of the audience. On top of this, the overall script is a convolutedly cluttered mess, with a variety of underwritten and abruptly rushed subplots that are continuously fighting for time in a structure that clumsily deviates back and forth between respective characters and timelines with the guiding ease of a rhinoceros smashing through a glass building. It becomes tediously uninvesting as quickly as the film’s half hour mark, bouncing off of one character to the next in ways that make this feel like a stage show brought to film, but without any of the realism or justifiable motivation to evade some highly skeptical and illogical actions by its characters, surmising stakes to the many interweaving conflicts as forcefully manufactured and predictable as a writer who has evidently spent fifteen years away from contemporary storytelling, keeping Brooks feeling so out of touch in a film that he strangely sets in 2008, at the height of the Obama revolution. While the desire to base this at the tail end of the economical depression serves as a clumsy plot device towards making Ella feel like a breath of fresh air to mend the fences of the tenderly vulnerable relationship between man and their government, the political dominating of this storytelling viciously takes away focus from the hearty center that persists in this family attempting to heal from their past trysts, creating a jaggedly juxtaposed consistency that not only crafts so many unforeseen tonal clashes to the movie’s atmosphere, but also wastes away mesmerizing personalities in the depths of so many underwhelming and unexplored performances to one of the year’s most decorated ensembles. Seriously, there are so many credible names attached to this film that I found more joy out of the surprises elicited from their stacking appearances, rather than the beats of the narrative, and though Jamie Lee Curtis easily gives the single best performance of the film, with eccentric deliveries in her will as a protector to Ella, the rest of the cast don’t give anything close to the level of personality or emotionality that utilize their limitless talents, with Ayo Edibiri and Rebecca Hall given a backhanded slap of insignificance to only be involved in one scene each. Even Woody Harrelson, whose time-proven charisma has improved upon some of his weakest films, feels so dumbfoundedly padded within a repetitious outline, without any kind of meaningful evolution on his character, and in a film placing so much weight of responsibility on the shoulders of Mackey’s resiliently defined performance, we never feel any closer to these characters, in keeping their emotional layers a bit too close to the chest, and it leaves the thankless efforts of so many prestigious names feeling like unavoidably stacked trades, instead of meaningful contributors, standing as the biggest mismanagement of Brooks’ rapidly plunging direction. Speaking of Brooks’ deteriorating direction, the film’s deviation of its thoroughly advertised comedic sensibilities during the first half transitions into more of a dramatically enacted succeeding half, and while that’s expected in a movie with so many moving plates of personal trauma to these characters, Brooks direction never conjures anything emotionally wrenching or endearingly gravitating to the ways it’s thoroughly documented, with many of these compacted subplots readying abruptly rushed resolutions, as a result of the baffling decision to make a majority of this movie set during one continuous day. While this specified framing has worked wonderfully for other films persisting within 24 hours, here it unnaturally orchestrates the actions of its characters in ways that distract from the audience while detracting from confrontational distancing, forcing so many of these scattered conflicts to relieve themselves in ways that are unintentionally hilarious to the ways they’re introduced as catastrophic, before resolved as nagging speedbumps. It leaves so many of the film’s defining moments drained by confrontations that fall entirely flat with so many underdeveloped dynamics deriving from the same established ingredients, serving reminder not only to most of them needing omitted all together from the film’s finished product, but also the glaring evidence into the overstuffed creativity of the concept, crafting an occasionally aimless and unavoidably dated narrative with the annoying overachiever at the forefront of the audience’s intended empathy.

OVERALL
“Ella McCay” marks A structurally flawed and creatively cluttered return for 85-year-old director, James L. Brooks, whose fifteen year layoff behind the lens has seemingly led to a tonally imbalanced political fairytale that drops at the single most confrontational time in American politics, with very little redeeming qualities in the inconsistency of performances from one of the year’s most stacked ensembles. Despite James finding comfort in the unresolved scars of so many complexly flawed adult characters, the frequent shuffling and tug for time between an abundance of confounding subplots, leaves the comeback effort feeling definitively drained by its excessively reaching scope, surmising a rare misfire for Brooks that fumbles feminism in the same ways that many storytellers before him have.

My Grade: 4.4 or D-