Ella McCay (2025) Parents Guide

Ella McCay Rated PG-13 by Motion Picture Rating (MPA) for strong language, some sexual material and drug content.

It’s strange to think that fifteen years have passed since James L. Brooks last stepped behind the camera. This is the man who gave us “Terms of Endearment,” “Broadcast News,” and “As Good As It Gets” movies so warm and clear-eyed they became touchstones. And yet the long gap isn’t really the curious part. What lingers, faintly embarrassing like a memory you’d rather not revisit, is his 2010 romantic comedy misfire “How Do You Know.” That star-stuffed dud Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, and Jack Nicholson landed with such a thud it practically buried Nicholson’s career along with it. He hasn’t appeared in a film since. Hard as it is to say, Brooks didn’t just have a flop; he unintentionally took one of cinema’s most magnetic actors down with the ship.

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So naturally you’d hope perhaps even assume that “Ella McCay” would mark a course correction, a reminded-to-breathe return for one of Hollywood’s great sentimentalists. Instead, the movie walks straight off the platform and directly onto the rails. Brooks, once the poetic chronicler of earnest, fallible people, seems to have lost his compass here. “Ella McCay” has the shell of sincerity but none of its beating heart; it brims with hollow gestures and ideas that feel weirdly patronizing. You can sense the film straining to convince you that it has something soulful to say about these characters and about politics, but the sentiments are generic, the insights shallow, and the tone faintly scolding.

Emma Mackey steps into the title role and yes, the near-match between her name and her character’s is distracting in a way that might’ve been charming if the film itself had a pulse. But it doesn’t, so it just registers as an odd coincidence. Ella is the Lt. Governor of an unnamed state, though the year is pinned to 2008, and the sitting Governor, played by Albert Brooks, has just been tapped as Secretary of the Interior. The implication is that Brooks is playing Ken Salazar of Colorado, except Salazar never served as governor, so suddenly we’re drifting through a political funhouse where the geography doesn’t map to reality. Maybe Brooks assumed no one would look that up but they will, and the film’s off-hand relationship to truth is only one of its many careless missteps.

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Ella herself radiates big dreams and unwieldy ideals the kind that look great on paper but wilt in the unforgiving arena of American governance. She’s overflowing with policy ambitions yet utterly lacking in charisma. And that’s the actual premise, not a dig at Mackey, who gives a composed and thoroughly grounded performance. This is a woman who’d rather serve people directly than schmooze donors or make small talk at fundraisers. But in a system built on compromise and performative friendliness, her refusal to play the game puts her on a losing path from day one. Ella doesn’t want to get good at the kabuki of politics; she wants meaningful change, not incremental half-wins. Naturally, the old guard including the members of her own political party resent her for it. You can practically feel the walls close in.

Her home life offers little respite. She’s married to Ryan (Jack Lowden), a local pizza tycoon whose mediocrity is an open secret. Everyone knows Ryan’s a mess; even Ella knows it, though she tries to convince herself otherwise. Once she ascends to the governorship, he promptly begins making choices that undermine her career. On top of that, her estranged father Eddie (Woody Harrelson) rolls back into town wanting to patch up their relationship though his attempts are clumsy and half-formed. Meanwhile Ella’s brother Casey (Spike Fearn), still heartbroken over his ex, has retreated from the world, and her well-meaning aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) floats around the story with nothing in particular to do. Ella ends up juggling everyone’s crises but her own, forever pulled away from the political responsibilities she’s supposedly meant to shoulder. And when she does focus on the job, the chorus of disapproval grows louder.

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“Ella McCay” is about politics in the same way Pixar’s “Cars” is about automobiles: the subject is front and center, but the depiction bears almost no resemblance to reality. Everything feels feather-light, frictionless a quirky, impulse-driven vision of public service where the most daunting obstacle is a single long meeting and where scandals appear out of nowhere and evaporate just as quickly. There’s no sense of the grind, the compromise, the moral sludge politicians wade through daily. It’s politics as a decorative backdrop.

Brooks tries so hard to make the film sweet that the absence of bitterness the necessary counterweight leaves a strange, cloying aftertaste. Ironically, his refusal to acknowledge the harsher truths of the political world makes the film feel even more sour, as though the ignored ugliness has pooled in the corners and seeped under the door. The movie’s idea of a big political win is almost indistinguishable from a loss, delivered with a wagging finger toward any young idealist in the crowd who dares to hope for more. It’s a vision of progress that’s timid and temporary, doled out unevenly, and liable to collapse later. You can’t help but feel vaguely insulted.

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The unbelievability extends far beyond policy. These characters simply don’t behave like human beings. (And no, not in the good, idiosyncratic sense.) There’s a major heel-turn late in the story that contradicts an entire flashback built to prove the opposite. Casey’s subplot practically defies description it’s as though someone who’d only heard the word “rom-com” once tried to reverse-engineer one. His climactic moment with his ex Susan (Ayo Edebiri) ends so abruptly and with such oddball logic that even the film seems to shrug and move on. Wrapping it up fast apparently mattered more than making it feel true.

And then there’s the line delivered with total seriousness claiming that the word “trauma” has no opposite. It’s presented as one of those drop-the-mic life lessons, except… it’s flat-out wrong. The opposite is “healing.” Ask a dictionary. Ask a therapist. Many would say “catharsis” also works. But that line, in all its confident inaccuracy, sums up the entire movie: “Ella McCay” keeps announcing profound truths that dissolve the moment you look at them closely.

I wish I could say this film marked a renewed spark for James L. Brooks, a return to the gracefully observed storytelling he once did better than nearly anyone. But I can’t. Not this time.

Content Breakdown for Parents

Violence & Intensity: Very little if any physical violence. Most conflict is emotional or verbal. Some tense, dramatic moments betrayals, family confrontations, political pressure but nothing graphic or gory.

Language: Mild profanity occasionally. No pervasive use of slurs or hateful speech. Tone remains serious and adult young viewers might notice “political talkiness,” heavy honesty, and occasional blunt talk about relationships and moral compromises.

Sexual Content / Nudity: Mature-adult relationships are depicted (marriage, romantic past). No explicit sex scenes or nudity. Intimacy is implied, not shown.

Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking: Maybe light social drinking (as part of adult social/political settings), but no glamorized or problematic substance use. No drug use central to the plot.

Parental Concerns — Things Parents Might Want to Know

• The adult-themed politics and relational issues (marriage strain, betrayal, family estrangement) may go over younger children’s heads or feel heavy.
• Some emotional weight: talk of moral compromise, characters undertaking questionable choices, disappointments.
• Mild profanity and mature relationship contexts not overt, but present.
• The film doesn’t “sugar-coat” politics: the idealism can sometimes feel cynical or unsettling.

“Ella McCay” arrives in theaters on December 12.