Ella McCay: Savvy dramedy showcases a star on the rise

Ella McCay(2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity and fleeing drug content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

We don’t often get to witness such an extraordinary, star-making performance, but that’s certainly the case here.

 

(I vividly recall watching Emma Stone, in 2010’s rather modest Easy A, and knowing — with certainty — that she’d go far.)

 

When her father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson), once again lives down to lowest expectations,
Ella (Emma Mackey, center) has no time to react before her Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee
Curtis) — Eddie's sister — threatens to throttle him.

Actually, it’s not entirely fair to call Ella McCay a breakout role for star Emma Mackey — or Emma Margaret Marie Tachard-Mackey, to use her mellifluous full name — since she already made significant waves in the British 2019-23 TV series Sex Education. Even so, seeing her wholly inhabit this big-screen character — with every word, gesture, expression, flip of her hair and sideways glance so perfectly delivered — is enchanting.

Credit where due, Mackey is matched — scene for scene, moment for moment — by an equally riveting (and hilarious) performance by co-star Jamie Lee Curtis.

 

Writer/director James L. Brooks’ political-hued dramedy is an intentional throwback to classic, socially conscious screwball comedies such as His Girl Friday, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Sullivan’s Travels … but with a modern spin that reflects contemporary bureaucratic intransience. On top of which, Brooks also paints a deeply intimate portrait of estranged family dynamics and the difficulty of navigating — let alone moving beyond — festering old wounds.

 

The story is narrated by Julie Kavner — her gravelly voice immortalized forever as Marge Simpson — who cheekily breaks the fourth wall, during her introduction, to inform us of her role. Ella McCay (Mackey) debuts in mid-flurry, as a poised, caring, idealistic, ambitious and highly intelligent 34-year-old who happens to be Lt. Governor of an unidentified state. (Filming took place throughout Rhode Island.)

 

We’re scarcely given time to digest this, when her friend and mentor, affectionately known as Governor Bill (Albert Brooks), reveals that he has just accepted a cabinet position in the forthcoming presidential administration. He immediately resigns, leaving a breathless Ella to serve as governor for the remaining 14 months of his term.

 

However … with a little help from our narrator …

 

… we’re also whisked back in time, to Ella’s 16-year-old self, confronted by yet another extramarital scandal involving her father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson). It’s a crucial moment, and everybody is dressed to perfection; Eddie expects his family to stand united, at his side, as he confronts the reporters waiting outside the front door of their home.

Death on the Nile: Waterlogged

Death on the Nile (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence, bloody images and sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.11.22

Vanity, thy name is Kenneth Branagh.

 

Bad enough that he dishonors Agatha Christie by turning her shrewdly stoic, sharp-as-a-tack Hercule Poirot, he of the “little gray cells,” into a despondent, uncertain, weeping snowflake with no emotional control: somebody to be scorned, not admired.

 

Newlyweds Simon (Armie Hammer) and Linnet (Gal Gadot) happily tour an Egyptian
bazaar, little realizing that the stalker they've hoped to elude, isn't very far away...

Worse yet, Michael Green’s laughably overcooked and overwrought script makes absolutely hash of Christie’s celebrated 1937 novel, and his efforts at dialogue are remarkably unpersuasive.

At one point, having just acknowledged dropping a massive chunk of stone onto an unwary victim below, one suspect then wails “But I never would have killed her,” despite having just admitted attempting to do that very thing: a statement that goes unchallenged by Poirot and everybody else, which makes them look like fools.

 

That’s probably the worst howler in this egregiously stupid script, but it has plenty of company.

 

And as if all this isn’t enough, Branagh — who also directs — tolerates (encourages?) overacting to such a ludicrous degree, that he telegraphs the plot’s most surprising twist.

 

This may well be the worst big-screen Christie adaptation ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public … and I’m quite mindful of 1965’s dreadful Alphabet Murders — Tony Randall being an equally appalling Poirot — while making this claim.

 

Dame Agatha must be spinning in her grave.

 

This brings us to the issue of assigning early 21st century attitudes on characters who inhabit the 1930s: an “enhancement” that must be handled with care, lest the disconnect become distracting. There certainly isn’t anything wrong — as a positive example — with making two of these suspects lesbian lovers; even if Christie never specifically addressed such a relationship, they certainly existed.

 

But completely changing numerous supporting characters — in name and behavior — is both unnecessary and irritating. 

 

This film also opens with a nightclub display of Miley Cyrus-style “dirty dancing” that is impressively salacious by today’s standards, let alone those of nearly a century ago: a sequence that Branagh allows to go on, and on — and on — long past the point of … well … having made its point.

 

And that’s far from the only sequence that feels wholly out of place.

 

Clearly, since 2017’s similarly “modified” Murder on the Orient Express was such a box office success — grossing more than $350 million worldwide — Branagh’s reprisal of Poirot was inevitable.

 

But good grief … couldn’t all concerned have tried a little harder?

 

Sigh.