Ella McCay

Directed by James L. Brooks, Ella McCay follows Emma Mackey’s title character as she attempts to navigate a series of personal and professional problems. Filmmaker Brooks, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a relentlessly erratic yet basically entertaining dramedy that benefits from its bright, zippy pace and solid central performance, as, in terms of the latter, Mackey offers up a thoroughly pleasant and ingratiating turn that goes a long way towards smoothing over the picture’s various deficiencies – including Jamie Lee Curtis’ often uncomfortably broad work as Ella’s larger-than-life aunt and a meandering, flabby midsection rife with underwhelming subplots and digressions (eg virtually everything involving Ella’s shut-in brother, Spike Fearn’s Casey). And while the picture is rarely, if ever, as engrossing as Brooks has obviously intended, Ella McCay does, at least, build towards a stirring third act that ensures it concludes on a relatively positive (albeit far-from-memorable) note – with the end result a decent-enough effort that hardly stands near the top of Brooks’ mostly stellar filmography.

**1/2 out of ****