December 10, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by James L. Brooks
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2008 (with flashbacks to the 1990s) in an unnamed state on the East Coast of the United States, the comedy/drama film “Ella McKay” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A politician must navigate major changes in her personal life and in her career after she suddenly becomes governor of her state, which leads to her husband becoming jealous and her estranged father coming back into her life.
Culture Audience: “Ella McKay” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker James L. Brooks, and comedy/drama movies where almost everything comes across as phony.
Tonally off-balance and annoying, “Ella McKay” is a comedy/drama polluted with unrealistic dialogue. A talented cast can’t save this dull and witless movie about a politician whose life is negatively affected by her boorish father and selfish husband. This is the type of movie that tries too hard to be a “screwball comedy” but ends up falling flat in almost every way.
Written and directed by James L. Brooks, “Ella McKay” has a jumbled way of telling the story, and there’s a subplot in the movie that is completely unnecessary and very irritating to watch. The movie takes place in an unnamed state on the East Coast of the United States. “Ella McKay” was actually filmed in Rhode Island, and there are several Rhode Island landmarks in the movie. The story in “Ella McKay” takes place mostly in 2008, but there are a few flashbacks taking place in the 1990s.
The irksome levels of “Ella McKay” start right from the beginning of the film, which is narrated by a character named Estelle Roth (played by Julie Kavner), who has a gravelly voice that is memorable but very unpleasant to hear as narration. There might be a minority of people who love Kavner’s voice in this movie, but most people will feel like they’re hearing fingernails on a chalkboard every time Estelle pipes in with her uninteresting and distracting commentary.
Estelle is the loyal administrative assistant of 34-year-old politician Ella McKay (played by Emma Mackey), who is ambitious and intelligent but not very well-liked among her peers because they think she is somewhat standoffish and condescending to them. In the beginning of the movie, Ella is lieutenant governor of her state. She has risen to this level of power mainly because she’s been mentored by Bill Moura (played by Albert Brooks), the state’s governor. Ella has worked with Bill for almost her entire career, including when she was Bill’s chief of staff when he was mayor of an unnamed city.
Ella is also dealing with some emotional baggage stemming from her unhappy childhood, which is shown in flashback scenes that are also narrated by Estelle. These flashback scenes, which take place in the 1990s, show that when Ella was a senior in high school in 1990, her life changed because of a scandal caused by her philandering father Eddie McKay (played by Woody Harrelson), a high-ranking executive at an unnamed company. Eddie had to resign from his job because of sexual misconduct allegations against him.
Eddie leaving the company was labeled a “retirement” for public-relations reasons, but too many people know the real reason for Eddie’s abrupt exit from his job. Eddie’s wife Claire McCay (played by Rebecca Hall) is humiliated but decides to stay in the marriage. When Ella asks her why, Claire says sadly, “Because I love him.” During this turbulent time in the McKay family, Ella’s younger brother Casey McKay (played by Lincoln Whitty) is 4 years old and too young to understand what is going on.
Eddie and Claire decide to move to California to start a new life. Ella is close to finishing high school, and her parents don’t want to interrupt her education by having her start over in a new school in California. Ella is very close to Casey, and their parents don’t want the kids to be separated. And so, the decision is made to have Ella and Casey stay behind, with Eddie’s no-nonsense sister Helen McKay (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) becoming the guardian of the kids. Helen (a bachelorette who owns a restaurant/bar) is furious with Eddie over how his misdeeds have ripped apart the family. Helen says she’ll never forgive Eddie.
It should be noted that although co-star Hall shares top top billing for this movie, her screen time in “Ella McKay” is less than 10 minutes. Another flashback shows that six years after Eddie and Claire moved to California, Claire died of a terminal illness. Casey (played by Kellen Raffaelo) was 10 years old, and Ella was a college student. At the funeral wake, Ella is disgusted to see one of Eddie’s obvious mistresses playfully groping Eddie on his rear end, as Eddie seems to enjoy this groping. None of this is spoiler information because the trailer for “Ella McKay” reveals about 70% of the movie’s plot.
In 2008, Ella is married to restaurateur Ryan Newell (played by Jack Lowden), who was her high-school sweetheart. Ryan’s family owns a chain of restaurants. His unnamed parents are still married, but they don’t have an equal partnership. Ryan’s mother (played by Becky Ann Baker) is domineering and materialistic, while his father (played by John Neisler) is very passive and sweet-natured. It’s hinted that Ryan’s father might have dementia.
Ella and Ryan are a case of “opposites attract.” Ella tends to be an uptight planner and has a “hero” complex, where she wants to be the hero in everything that she does. Ryan tends to be adventurous, spontaneous and not as concerned with wanting to “save the world.” The cause that Ella is most passionate about is pre-natal health care. She’s been trying for years to get a controversial bill passed into law that will give better access to pre-natal health care. The bill is controversial because it will be costly to taxpayers if passed into law.
Ella and Ryan, who do not have children together, seem to have a good marriage in the beginning of the movie. One of the things that they’ve been doing to keep their sexual intimacy alive is having secret dates where they have sex at an uninhabited apartment that’s government property. It’s technically illegal for Ella (an elected official) to do this because it’s “wrongful use” of government property.
Somehow, a journalist for an unnamed well-known media outlet has found out about these trysts and is threatening to report this story, which could be a big scandal for Ella. This journalist is never seen in the movie. However, Ryan tells Ella that he and the journalist have been in contact with each other. This contact will have repercussions throughout this jumbled story.
Ella is still very close to Helen, the only family member who has consistently been in Ella’s adult life. Ella has not seen or spoken to her father Eddie for 13 years. Ella is also estranged from Casey (played by Spike Fearn), who is now a socially awkward young adult who works from home as a technology analyst. Casey cut off contact with Ella sometime after he began living on his own. The details are murky, but it’s later revealed that Casey has agoraphobia and is embarrassed about it.
Helen doesn’t really approve of Ryan and has never really liked him, ever since Helen caught teenage Ella sneaking out of the house to spend the night with Ryan. Helen also doesn’t think Ryan has integrity because she remembers an instance when adult Ryan bragged about how he was able to make an extra $300,000 in one year because he watered down the tomato sauce in his family’s restaurants.
Ella’s life goes through a big change when Bill is appointed secretary of the interior in the administration for Barack Obama who, at the time this story takes place in 2008, is the president-elect of the United States. (Bill’s new job in the Obama administration is the only indication in the movie that Ella and Bill are Democrats.) Bill resigns from his position as governor, so Ella automatically becomes governor and is expected to serve out the 14-month remainder of the governor’s term that Bill had. The scene of Ella’s inauguration as governor is one of the most cringeworthy in the movie because Bill keeps passing notes to Ella to remind her to mention him in her speech.
Ella has a friendly rapport with her driver, a state trooper named Nash (played by Kumail Nanjiani), who genuinely likes Ella. However, their conversations are stilted and sound very fake, much like a lot of other conversations in this mishandled movie. Nash’s only purpose in the movie is to show that someone other than Bill and Estelle likes spending time with Ella on the job. Ella is supposedly so unlikable, Bill tells her that their colleagues want to run the other way when she enters the room.
Around the same time that Ella becomes governor, her father Eddie comes back into her life because his current girlfriend Olympia (voiced by Tracey Ullman) insists that she will break up with Eddie unless he mends his relationship with Ella. Olympia is never seen in the movie and is only heard as a voice on the phone. Eddie asks Ella for forgiveness, but his contrition is exactly what it appears to be: forced and not his idea.
There’s a completely useless subplot about Casey pining over a woman named Susan (played by Ayo Edebiri), who was a close platonic friend until Casey deliberately cut off contact with her by changing his phone number a few years ago. Casey wanted their relationship to become romantic, but he fumbled his attempt to tell her, so he decided it would be better not to communicate with Susan again after she began dating someone else. After Ella reaches out to Casey and reconnects with him, she encourages Casey to reconnect with Susan and confess his true feelings to Susan. Just like “Ella McKay” cast member Hall, Edebiri has a role in the movie that’s really just a glorified cameo with less than 10 minutes of screen time.
After Ella becomes governor, she experiences problems in her marriage. Ryan’s manipulative mother convinces him that he’s being emasculated unless Ella gives him a cushy government job. Ryan, who is spineless and shallow, agrees because he thinks that he should have a title other than “governor’s husband” for the parking space that he has when he visits the governor’s office. None of this makes any sense because Ryan must have known at some point that ambitious Ella would eventually want to become governor. It’s not as if she suddenly switched careers to becoming a politician.
In addition, Ryan has his own busy and successful career in the restaurant industry. It’s mentioned several times in the movie that Ryan is essentially the leader of his family’s business. But somehow, he thinks Ella owes him a prestigious government position while he also wants to keep his demanding restaurateur job. Ryan’s jealousy about Ella’s career looks like a contrivance just so certain things can happen in the movie.
One of the worst things about “Ella McKay” is how it introduces supporting characters and doesn’t do much with giving viewers enough reasons to care about these characters. And there are pieces of information that are dumped in the movie with no meaningful context. For example, at one point in the movie, Casey mentions that he makes $2 million a year from his job, but it’s never explained why he lives in a small apartment that looks like it’s occupied by someone who is most definitely not a millionaire. Is this supposed to make Casey look modest and quirky?
Far from being a movie about female empowerment, “Ella McKay” repeatedly shows how the movie’s female protagonist has her entire life controlled and affected by men with a toxic patriarchal attitude. She becomes governor not by being elected on her own merits but because her egotistical governor boss resigned, and she was given the job by default. Ella’s personal misery comes mostly from her father and her husband, whose horrible actions have long-lasting consequences. Helen has a much stronger personality than Ella, but Helen is made to look like a squawking meddler. The cast members do the best that they can with the subpar material that they are given, but they are stuck in a boring and tone-deaf movie that stumbles along until its very corny end.
20th Century Pictures will release “Ella McKay” in U.S. cinemas on December 12, 2025.
