Nate At The Movies

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Anytime Morgan goes out of town for the weekend, one of my first thoughts is, “how many movies can I go see?”. Unfortunately, this weekend doesn’t hold a lot of movies that Morgan wouldn’t also want to see, so Ella McCay won tonight in a fierce battle with Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. As much as I didn’t like the first Five Nights at Freddy’s, Ella McCay was somehow worse.

The biggest bone I have to pick with this movie was with the script. Not only did it feel weird to set this in 2008; it also felt like James Brooks probably hadn’t touched this script since the Great Recession. The beats had become dull, the characters all one-note and underdeveloped, and there were so few successes and good things for these characters to build on in the story. Not until the final five minutes did Ella have any sort of political success, and it was rushed at that. Nearly every aspect of this script was half-baked, except for Ella in that scene with her brother.

So much of the film felt phoned in, especially most of the performances. For a film with so much acting talent, the product was underwhelming and stiff. I did enjoy Kumail Nanjiani’s character, though—he was the only one whose performance didn’t feel forced, and he also had some of the only decent jokes in the whole film (when he rattled off a list of things for his partner to do with his kids for free, for instance). There were a few characters whose arcs I really didn’t enjoy, namely Ryan. What an entitled and insecure husband; just enjoy your wife’s success!

Despite its annoyingly simple script, Ella McCay left me with more questions than I had coming in, chief among them being: “What’s the lesson here?”. No one became a better person, no one experienced sustained success or personal development, and no one learned from their mistakes. Ella McCay was governor for three days, and then it ends. While Ella McCay still has In Your Dreams beat for never being offensive or toxic in its messaging, that doesn’t mean I prefer no message or an incomplete story, and unfortunately, Ella McCay had both of those. Another question that I had as the credits rolled: “How did this movie secure a score from Hans freaking Zimmer?”.