Review: 'Ella McCay,' occasionally funny and earnest to a fault, falls to director James L. Brooks' habit of being too nice to his characters

The thing about James L. Brooks, as a writer and as a director, is that he likes all his characters — sometimes to a fault, as seen in his shaggy, sloppy, overstuffed new comedy, “Ella McCay.”

The man behind “Terms of Endearment” and “Broadcast News” hasn’t directed a movie since “How Do You Know” in 2010, and there’s a certain creakiness in the way he conjures up these characters, many of them well-meaning and charming when taken separately but a little too much when flung together in one movie.

Our title character, played by Emma Mackey, is a young politician in Albany, N.Y., who’s better at policy details than the glad-handing and horse-trading of modern politics. She started out as aide to Bill Moore (Albert Brooks), a Democratic politician who is a natural at shaking hands and fund-raising — and when Moore became governor, he made Ella his lieutenant governor. 

Before we get to that, though, there’s a prologue showing the teen Ella coping with the death of her mother, Claire (Rebecca Hall), and the unfaithfulness of her father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson). Ella keeps her anger in check, to protect her younger brother, Casey, as they move in to live with their aunt, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis). 

Back to the present: Gov. Moore gets the call to join the president’s cabinet, making Ella the governor. Ella tries to apply her head for policy to the state’s economic problems. Unfortunately, her lack of skill as a negotiator starts to unravel her governorship just as it’s starting. Compounding her problems is her husband, Ryan Newell (Jack Lowden), who owns some local pizza restaurants and wants to finagle his way into her administration. 

Then more family problems intrude. Eddie pops up unexpectedly, for starters. And Casey (played by Spike Fearn), now an agoraphobic sports-betting wizard with an unusual amount of recreational marijuana on hand, is pining for the woman (Ayo Edebiri) he let get away a year earlier.

Ella is not without support, chiefly from Aunt Helen, who acerbically cuts down anyone who dares to run afoul of her niece. Also in her corner is the state trooper who drives her (Kumail Nanjiani), and her cantankerous secretary, Estelle — played by Julie Kavner, who applies her Marge Simpson tones to the role of narrator.

That’s a lot of people to juggle in one movie, and maybe Brooks had it in mind to let things play out on the set and then cut a couple of characters in the editing bay. If Brooks is familiar with the advice given to writers, to “kill your darlings,” he didn’t heed it here.

Mackey gives a nice performance, though sometimes so subdued that she fades into obscurity amid her louder, wackier co-stars, like Curtis and Harrelson. Among the supporting cast, the standout is Brooks, in fleeting moments, who’s funny as the old-time politician who tries to mentor Ella. 

“Ella McCay” is a movie that hits on five interesting ideas when three would be enough. It’s an unfortunate example of subtraction by addition. 

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‘Ella McCay’

★★

Opens Friday, December 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong language, some sexual material and drug content. Running time: 115 minutes.