"I can't help but make Ella McCay sound incredible to everyone I talk to about it, even though that's not my intention, and even though Ella McCay is incredible only in the "Can you believe that actually happened?" sense. Some things you just have to see with your own eyes, and the first new film in 15 years from writer-director James L. Brooks is one of them."
"It aims for a tone of screwball comedy but misses not just that target but the whole damn dartboard, landing in a place that makes you wonder if the characters have checked their carbon-monoxide detectors lately, because nothing they do resembles the behavior of human beings breathing in the recommended levels of oxygen to function normally. Ella McCay is gas-leak cinema at its finest, which is to say that there is a naïve purity to its unhinged qualities that is almost charming."
The first new film in 15 years feels like outsider art, lacking familiarity with conventional narrative structure and character beats. The intended screwball-comedy tone frequently fails, producing characters whose behavior reads as implausible and unmoored. The title character is a 34-year-old lieutenant governor played by Emma Mackey. An overlong subplot centers on her MIT-educated younger brother, Casey, who has not left his house in 13 months after a breakup. The brother's attempt to reconcile by walking across town underscores the film's tonal dysfunction while the film's unhinged qualities retain an odd, naive charm.
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