Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ella McCay’ on Hulu, a Disappointing Dramedy Marking James L. Brooks’ Return to Filmmaking

Ella McCay (now streaming on Hulu) is one of 2025’s biggest creative and commercial duds, an especially bummer-outter of a truth considering it’s the first film in 15 years by beloved director and TV producer James L. Brooks. His list of credits in both mediums is as gilded as it gets: The Simpsons, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi on the small screen, As Good as It Gets, Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News on the big one – just to name a handful. But that doesn’t make the guy infallible, and this somewhat political dramedy vehicle for rising British star Emma Mackey (Netflix series Sex Education) is proof that even the greats are capable of the occasional bomb. 

ELLA MCCAY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: Julie Kavner looks directly into the camera and declares herself: “Hi – I’m the narrator,” she croaks in her unmistakable Marge Simpson voice. Don’t worry, nobody will break the fourth wall again, so why anyone does it in the first place is odd but let’s not get hung up on this grating inconsistency since there are so many more to come. Kavner plays Estelle, the secretary for Ella McCay (Mackey), Lt. Gov. of what state is this again? Michichussensonssippi? We’ll just call it State of Confusion, since that’s how this movie makes us feel. It’s 2008. Ella is 34, the third-youngest such person to ever hold the office. Except now we find ourselves in a flashback to when Ella had bangs and was 18, and was very protective and nurturing of her little brother, who needed the protection and nurture because their father (Woody Harrelson) is a sleazy adulterer, their mother (Rebecca Hall) is upset about it but is sticking with the guy anyway, I think, although who can tell in this junked-up script, but it doesn’t matter because she dies offscreen soon enough, thus mercifully ending Hall’s participation in this mess. What with one detail and another that lead to absolutely nothing notable, Ella ends up moving in with her Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), who’s cuckoo-bananas in a thoroughly irritating overstated way, to the point where you wonder if our dear beloved Jamie Lee should maybe consider a less high-octane coffee next time.

Back to 2008. No bangs. A reporter is all over Ella’s case because she committed a no-no by having unsanctioned lunchtime conjugal visits with her husband Ryan (Jack Lowden) in an apartment-office in the capitol building. OH NO SEND HER TO THE GULAG. Sex after marriage WILL NOT STAND in this reality! This uncrisis is further complicated when the sitting gov, Bill Moore (Albert Brooks), takes a cabinet position in the White House, vacating the seat for Ella to fill. Two seconds later, she’s sworn in and yammering on and on and on about her “Moms Bill” which includes funding door-to-door Tooth Tutors who hand out free dental supplies to poor kids. Two thousand and eight – what a time to be alive! She’d make a better governor if she’d just smile and kiss babies or whatever, right?

Meanwhile, the noontime nookie is a loose thread in the sweater of her life that quickly catches fire, and I know I mixed the metaphor there, but I blame it on this jank-ass all-over-the-place damn movie. Her father turns up after a 13-year estrangement, prodded by his current wife, a psychologist, to make amends with his children, and she’ll have none of that. Her brother Casey (Spike Fearn) is a shut-in reeling from his breakup with Susan (Ayo Edebiri), which should have nothing to do with this plot, but here we are, watching Ella try to manage her professional transition after accidentally drinking his marijuana lemonade – and, like, total UGH, she opposed the weed-legalization bill! Whatta – apologies, please gird yourself appropriately – drag!

Turns out Ryan is a real turd, too, because he wants to use Ella’s governorship to further his own career beyond being the mere owner of a chain of pizza restaurants, as egged on by his shitty shitty mother, who turns up for one scene and then disappears forever. So as Ella tries to be gubna, get her Tooth Tutors on the warpath, deal with her crumbling marriage, keep her cabinet awake during long-winded meetings, avoid her father and urge her brother to get out of the house and talk to his ex, the only stability she has is her loyal state-trooper driver (Kumail Nanjiani) and Aunt Helen, who mama-bears her into releasing tension with a little primal-scream therapy. Hey, you’d scream too if you were stuck in this dopey plot.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? I saw the last Brooks film, How Do You Know, and the only thing memorable about it was how forgettable it is. Ella McCay, which is thoroughly Brooksian in its distinctive ’90s/’00s comedio-dramatic blend of tones and high-profile cast, is not forgettable for all the wrong reasons. 

Performance Worth Watching: Gawd bless Jamie Lee Curtis. She works harder than anyone here, trying to will this movie to be funny. But even an Incredible Hulk of comedy like her has limitations.

Sex And Skin: Zilch.

Our Take: Late in the film, a rabid horde of – look out! – newsmedia jackals busts down a door, knocking Ella over and concussing her. That feeling is all too familiar to those of us sitting in the rubble that is Ella McCay. None of this film makes any sense in a political, movie-plot or human-behavior capacity. It thrashes and flails for two hours, then ends in a dissatisfying, simplistic manner. Bummers for everyone, then. 

I’ll hazard a guess that Brooks set the film in the Blackberry-phone era of politics because them’s were simpler times, when there was more room for optimism and when the central “scandal” was merely implausible instead of idiotic. Brooks’ screenplay is illogically constructed, cluttered with pointlessly drawn-out scenes and full of thematic dead ends. And Ella is about one-third of a fully realized character, while all those around her – a highly talented cast given embarrassingly broad things to do – have all the depth of a grid of emojis: Ella’s father is the clown, her husband is the monkey, her brother is the swirly-eyes guy and Aunt Helen is the smiley with the tongue sticking out. No, not the winking one. The one with the crazy eyes who looks extra bazonkers. Yeah, that one.

Yet all of this could be acceptable, if the film managed to inspire more than a couple of meager laughs (once the story breaks, Gov. Ella earns the nickname Little Miss Nooner) or even the slightest shred of emotional involvement in the situation or characters. Ella is little more than a vague go-getter of a woman who’s stuck in a plot where a bunch of things happen to her in (checks notes) three days? That’s a lot of drama for three measly days. Felt like 300, and you couldn’t tell, considering the screenplay’s inability to keep us properly oriented on a relatively simple timeline – all those flashbacks are ripe to be masticated by the editing-machine monster, and political machinations in Wiscituckxas move with alarmingly unrealistic expediency. There’s a bizarre lack of specificity and detail in this movie, giving it a floating, otherworldly quality, like a sitcom conceptualized by Tralfamadorians. Our main takeaway here is disappointment.

Our Call: Ella McKay is not OK. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.