20th Century Studios
Gracie Films
TSG Entertainment
Not part of a collection.
Ella McCay
A story about the people you love, and how to survive them.
An idealistic young politician juggles familial issues and a challenging work life while preparing to take over the job of her mentor, the state’s longtime incumbent governor.
- Original title
- Ella McCay
- Language
- EN
- Country
- US
- Budget
- $35,000,000
- Revenue
- $4,546,837
drewwash
Dec 17, 2025 · via TMDB
The writing is nearly perfect. The characters are honest to a fault. They don't represent real life, but instead how I wish we communicated, honestly. Ella McCay is an honest and well communicated character. To read the lines creates the nessiary delivery. The movie has a great story arc and it is nice to see a movie where you know exactly who the characters are immediately, but you still care about the drama they're experiencing. Watching in the theatre is not required. Ella McCay will be a fantastic couch movie. The father (Woody) is a womanizer. Between him and the story, I'd choose a different movie for a date night. SPOILER-ish The weakest part of the movie is the Ella's husbands mother. They had a lot to accomplish with her very breif scene and and it fell short. Nearly everything about it was to setup the low point of the movie and it tried too hard.
CinemaSerf
Dec 16, 2025 · via TMDB
When her boss and mentor “Governor Bill” (Albert Brooks) tells his lieutenant that he’s got himself a job in the cabinet, “Ella” (Emma Mackey) is excited that she can now get hold of the state’s infrastructure to institute her radical political agenda - for at least the next fourteen months. Her husband “Ryan” (Jack Lowden) is also thrilled, though perhaps not for quite the same reasons and her aunt/confidante “Helen” (Jamie Lee Curtis) is delighted for her news but sceptical about her husband being a bit of a ticking time bomb. “Ella” is more of a detail person and that has the ability to bore witless or just plain alienate her friends and foes alike, so when a journalist threatens to expose that she and her fella have been using state property for some extra-curricular activities, she finds herself seriously short of allies. Not least because, although the public seem not to care less, stupid old “Ryan” goes and gets himself involved with some fairly disastrous results for just about everyone. Meantime, we learn that she is the estranged daughter of the womanising “Eddie” (Woody Harrelson) and has a super-bright but agoraphobic brother “Casey” (Spike Fearn) whom she wants to encourage to reconnect with his erstwhile girlfriend “Susan” (Ayo Edebiri). So with all of that going on, she’s barely three days into her governorship and the wheels are coming off already. What can she do? I did like like the premises here. A woman less adept at the politics and bs inheriting a position where she can implement change without having to indulge the sponsors and, to an extent, even the voters. Instead, though, we get a weakly structured melodrama that gives JLC virtually no chance to impose herself, leaves Lowden with a completely undercooked character and so Mackey is left to sustain the film largely by herself, and there just isn’t enough story for anyone to get their teeth into. I thought Fearn stood out as his “Casey” brought to light a condition that isn’t often in the Hollywood spotlight, but even that was delivered in as shallow a fashion as just about everything else here. There’s an awful lot of dialogue, but it’s surprisingly lacklustre and as it rushed headlong towards it’s really nondescript conclusion, there were more than two people in the cinema who wanted to scream. James L. Brooks has written some great stories for the screen over the years, but this certainly isn’t one of them.
Back2Us Reviews
Dec 14, 2025 · via TMDB
This film tries to make several points and misses them all. The trailer doesn't lead to the fact that it's a political comedy-drama and it disappoints on that, too. I interviewed seven individuals after the film and they all said the same thing: they were disappointed and had no idea what the film was about. My wife and I rip this film a new one on our YouTube channel: @Back2UsReviews. We were very disappointed with the film and now understand why James L. Brooks hasn't had a hit since '97. So sad that Hans Zimmer had anything to do with this turd of a film.
Brent Marchant
Dec 4, 2025 · via TMDB
To paraphrase one of the Caped Crusader’s most articulate but menacing foes, “When is a movie not a movie?” The answer: “When it should be a TV series instead.” And that, unfortunately, is the inherent problem with this latest offering from legendary film and television writer-director-producer James L. Brooks. Set during the 2008 financial crisis, this comedy-drama tells the multifaceted story of its likable but beleaguered title character (Emma Mackey), an idealistic and enthusiastic lieutenant governor who champions causes aimed at helping everyday citizens, even if she’s somewhat long-winded and overbearing in expressing herself. But, when her boss, affable, plainspoken “Governor Bill” (Albert Brooks), is named to a Presidential Cabinet post, Ella is unexpectedly elevated into the state’s top executive post. However, she quickly finds herself dancing as fast as she can in handling both her political responsibilities and the challenges posed by her long-dysfunctional family members, pulling her in multiple directions at once. And that, sadly, is where the film gets itself into trouble by trying to incorporate too many story threads into one picture. Granted, each of the individual narrative elements is mostly solid but also mostly underdeveloped, simply because there are too many of them to adequately fit into the time constraints of a typical commercial production. For starters, there’s Ella’s stressful relationship with her estranged father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson), a serial philanderer who broke the heart of her lovelorn mother (Rebecca Hall), despite his pledges to mend his ways. Additional challenges come up in Ella’s dealings with her younger, socially inept brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), and his occasional girlfriend, Susan (Avo Edibiri), as well as the new governor’s strained relationship with her husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), who struggles with the demands of his wife’s excessive workload. To help her cope with these issues, Ella turns to her zany, no-nonsense Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), a confidante and surrogate mother of sorts to whom she turns whenever she needs advice (much of which is blunt, colorful and unconventional as only Curtis can dispense). Further insights are provided by Ella’s dutiful security detail chief (Kumail Nanjiani) and her trusted aide, Estelle (Julie Kavner), who doubles as the movie’s narrator. Along the way, the film thankfully fills in the characters’ back stories through a series of flashback sequences (a point on which many productions these days are woefully inadequate) and addresses a variety of key social and cultural themes to show that the picture has a conscience not to be ignored, a crucial element in an offering with political overtones. However, as should be apparent by now, that’s a lot of ground to cover in two hours, which is why this material would have been a better fit for the small screen than the big one. I would have loved to see each of these story threads expanded into episodes of their own, and a television slot would have allowed that. What’s more, given Brooks’s extensive history of producing long-running TV shows like The Simpsons, Rhoda and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, there are few in Hollywood better qualified than him to pull off something like this. Moreover, as charming as the characters are in this film, they engage in yet another screen exploration of the dysfunctional family theme, a concept the director has drawn on multiple times before in such films as “Terms of Endearment” (1983), “Broadcast News” (1987) and “As Good As It Gets” (1997), ground that the filmmaker has more than sufficiently covered already. While it’s true that “Ella McCay” has many elements going for it – great performances, terrific casting, engaging story threads, impressive character development and some decidedly good writing (especially when it comes to generating laughs) – the picture, regrettably, has difficulty pulling them all together, as if it were an overstuffed blender whose lid is precariously in danger of popping off. Clearly, some much-needed retooling of the project’s underlying concept and format is needed here, and, had that come to pass, this might have been yet another feather in Brooks’s storied cap. As it stands now, though, this will likely end up a largely forgotten item on the list of the director’s accomplishments (and that, as they say, is as good as it gets).
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
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Amazon Video
Apple TV Store
Google Play Movies
YouTube
Fandango At Home
Emma Mackey
Ella McCay
Jamie Lee Curtis
Helen
Jack Lowden
Ryan Newell
Kumail Nanjiani
Trooper Nash
Spike Fearn
Casey
Julie Kavner
Estelle
Rebecca Hall
Claire McCay
Ayo Edebiri
Susan
Albert Brooks
Governor Bill
Woody Harrelson
Eddie McCay
Joseph Brooks
Trooper Alexander
Kellen Raffaelo
Casey McCay (10 YO)
Becky Ann Baker
Ryan's Mom
Kathleen Choe
Maggie (Majority Leader)
Joseph Giles
TK
Tracey Ullman
Olympia (voice)
Gary Tanguay
Baritone Senator
Shawn Fitzgibbon
State Senator
Steve Gagliastro
State Rep Al Thomason
Chris Everett
Official #2
Nada Despotovich
Older Female Candidate
Robin Hamilton
Anchor #1
Chandra Michaels
On Air Anchor SC. 37
Erica McDermott
Hugging Woman
Charlie Talbert
Health Inspector Don
John Neisler
Ryan's Father
Andrea Pizza
Reporter
Miles Glew
Legal Aid Employee #6
Amelie McKendry
Dental Hygienist (uncredited)
Sheetal Sheth
Audrey (uncredited)
Tamara Hopkins
Mom (uncredited)
Tierre Diaz
Government Official (uncredited)
Richard Toyon
Production Design
John Schwartzman
Additional Director of Photography
Robert Elswit
Director of Photography
Ann Roth
Costume Design
Tony Sella
Thanks
James L. Brooks
Director
Seth William Meier
Second Unit Director
Tracey Wadmore-Smith
Editor
Francine Maisler
Casting
Melissa Morris
Casting Associate
Francine Maisler
Co-Producer
Seth William Meier
Executive Producer
Ravi D. Mehta
Head of Production
James L. Brooks
Producer
Julie Ansell
Producer
Richard Sakai
Producer
Seth William Meier
Unit Production Manager
Hans Zimmer
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Kevin O'Connell
Sound Re-Recording Mixer
James L. Brooks
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