Ella McCay: a sleepy political comedy

“I think you may have a small concussion,” says somebody to the title character of Ella McCay. It’s an apt diagnosis, seeing as how Ella (Emma Mackey), the newly minted, 34-year-old Governor of an unnamed and putatively Blue State, has just been trampled by reporters trying to score a quote from her about an erupting sex scandal. But the line rings true in another way as well; it sums up the bewildering sensation of watching a movie that seems to have suffered its own subdural hematoma. The slumped, almost somnolent posture of the 85-year old-James L. Brooks’ latest directorial effort suggests a frontier somewhere beyond late style; it’s so sleepily weird that viewers not on its particular fugue-state wavelength – and also the ones clinging to it – may need to pinch themselves occasionally.  

The reason that Ella has been handed the Governorship ahead of schedule — and with only a few months to go before a likely unwinnable state election — is that her boss and mentor, a veteran gladhander played by Albert Brooks, has bigger fish to fry. He’s leaving his office after many decades of photo ops and fundraising calls to take a post in Barack Obama’s cabinet; on his way out the door, he graciously thanks his former deputy for helping to define and set his policies while keeping a low profile. The opening voice-over (delivered by Julie Kavner) places Ella’s story in 2008, when, according to the narrator, “we all still got along with each other.” Such rose-colored hindsight suggests an acute, free-floating nostalgia – perhaps Brooks’ own – for both the audacity of hope in American political life and the commercial viability of glossy, sentimental studio comedies, neither of which are in a growth period at the moment.  

Brooks may be out of touch, but he has a grasp on the eternal verities of comic timing; the underlying theme of integrity is similarly old-fashioned, but carried by Mackey’s screwy righteousness, which can’t help but evoke Jean Arthur given the Capra-corny nature of the material. The villains of the piece, meanwhile, are both weak men – Ella’s lazy, status-seeking husband (Jack Lowden) and her philandering, dissembling wreck of a father (Woody Harrelson) – each of whom circles our addled, multi-tasking heroine in search of undeserved absolution. No spoilers on whether or not it’s forthcoming, or if Ella regains her wits after that knock on the noggin. But there are worse feelings to have at a movie than the suspicion that everything will work out just fine for the people who deserve it, and taken on its own terms, Brooks’ tale of virtue as its own reward is sufficiently endearing.  

 ► Ella McCay is in UK cinemas now.