Film Review: ELLA MCCAY (2025): James L. Brooks’ Latest Makes for an Interesting, If Occasionally Flat, Political Dramedy

Ella McCay Review

Ella McCay (2025) Film Review, a movie written and directed by James L. Brooks and starring Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Ayo Edebiri. Albert Brooks, Kumail Nanjiani, Spike Fearn, Jack Lowden, Rebecca Hall, Julie Kavner, Becky Ann Baker, Joey Brooks, Gary Tanguay, Sheetal Sheth, Erica McDermott, Amelie McKendry and Tamara Hopkins.

Writer/director James L. Brooks returns to the screen with the awkwardly entertaining dramedy, Ella McCay. In the film, Emma Mackey plays a governor named Ella McCay who starts out her life with a lot of family-related drama. She overcomes many formidable obstacles to win herself a good political job where her aspirations to help the less fortunate could be ideally realized. This movie has some intriguing themes and anyone who likes political comedies will enjoy a lot of the behind-the-scenes looks at the workings of the political arena. However, the film mixes in one too many story lines with one of them, in particular, coming off as flat and uninteresting even with the usually reliable Ayo Edebiri playing a key part in it.

This film is loaded with star power per your typical James L. Brooks movie. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Aunt Helen gets many of the movie’s juiciest lines and Curtis has a fantastic rapport with Mackey that manifests itself in a likable way. Albert Brooks plays the former governor, Bill, who moves on to better things when he offers Ella the opportunity of becoming the governor. Ella’s estranged dad, Eddie (Woody Harrelson, most of his scenes are sadly most likely left on the cutting room floor), shows up at Aunt Helen’s bar/restaurant where he tells her he has a newfound respect for life which offends Ella being that he also admits there’s a new woman in his life as well which disrespects the memory of Ella’s mom.

Some of the early scenes present Ella’s kind mom, Claire (Rebecca Hall), who dies an untimely death which makes the terrific Hall’s brief sequences less interesting than some of the others in the picture. This movie’s plot revolves around Ella’s relationship with her controlling husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), a man who doesn’t have as much integrity as Ella even though he tries to steer and manipulate Ella’s every move. At first, Ryan’s victory dance with Ella for her political victory is cute, but, later on, the movie reveals that its key plot point centers on Ryan’s role in the action as an opponent to Ella rather than an ally.

Julie Kavner, always terrific, plays Estelle, Ella’s long-time assistant who digs her and serves as the narrator of the movie. With her “Marge Simpson” voice, Kavner has a relatively brief amount of screen time in the film, but she still emerges as a dependably humorous character with a very distinct presence brought to the role by the fabulous Kavner. The biggest surprise is the complete waste of funnyman Kumail Nanjiani who is Ella’s driver that Ella always leans in closer to in order to hear what he’s saying. Nanjiani, unfortunately, doesn’t have much to work with here.

The scenes which almost kill the movie revolve around Ella’s brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), and his bond with the young woman played by Ayo Edebiri. When Casey and Edebiri’s character meet up, the dialogue is wooden as a stick and the relationship between the two characters is far short of being convincing as Casey seems to like the girl played by Edebiri much more than she likes him. This stuff is boring with a capital “B.”

Jamie Lee Curtis is highly watchable and immensely entertaining in the role she plays here. This part is a reminder that even when the material may not be up to snuff, the main actors and actresses here (Curtis, especially) can leave a lasting mark with Curtis ultimately taking top honors away from Mackey. Ella McCay makes many attempts at trying to be cute and a brief screaming competition between Curtis and Mackey is one of the highlights of the last minutes of the picture. Too bad, the trailers gave this scene away.

This film falls flat in some of its oversimplified politics too. When Ella has a meeting with her colleagues, some of them fall asleep which doesn’t bode well in a movie that tries to present Ella McCay as a woman with determination and with the potential of being the best governor around.

Mackey brings much heart to the role of Ella and though Ella’s husband is ultimately made out to be a jerk, the movie makes us ultimately believe Mackey’s character would be involved with a man with this many flaws because of her checkered family past. Meanwhile, Albert Brooks (who worked on the director’s Broadcast News in the 1980’s) is as interesting as ever with his usual dry humor becoming a driving force of the movie’s side story line.

In the final analysis, Ella McCay doesn’t say as much about relationships or politics as it could have. Ella’s husband becomes an annoying character who feels like he’s come from another movie altogether. On the other end of the spectrum, Curtis shines in one of her most energetic performances to date. One often wishes for more screen time with her. If Mackey weren’t so enjoyable to watch, the whole movie would have self-destructed. Instead, Ella McCay becomes a movie with quite a few intelligent insights despite some of its amateurish production values, silly scenes and weak characters.

Rating: 6.5/10

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