Emma Mackey and Jamie Lee Curtis in Ella McCay
ELLA MCCAY
I have no idea if Alissa Wilkinson, film critic for the New York Times, and Alison Willmore, film critic for New York magazine, are friends, or acquaintances, or if they even know each other – or if, based on their eerily similar names and work sites, they're actually the same person. But all reviewers want to be considered independent thinkers and no one wants to be labeled a copycat. So it was weirdly coincidental that, in assessing writer/director James L. Brooks' Ella McCay, both Wilkinson and Willmore employed the same metaphor in their reviews' opening paragraphs.
Wilkinson stated, “I am here with reassurances: Don't worry. Your movie theater wasn't leaking gas.” Willmore, meanwhile, called Brooks' new comedy “gas-leak cinema at its finest,” adding that the film “makes you wonder if the characters have checked their carbon-monoxide detectors lately, because nothing they do resembles the behavior of human beings breathing in the recommended levels of oxygen to function normally.” First of all: Ouch. Second of all: I get why both writers went with the gas-leak conceit, because it's entirely fitting. Dreadful though it is, Ella McCay didn't anger me the way other very-bad movies have, and didn't exactly make me sad, either. It more accurately made me woozy, like I was still reeling from getting clocked in the head a minute prior. And while I don't know whether the cast felt the same, the vast majority of distracted-seeming performers here do appear engaged in subtextual messaging to their director: “Are you sure this is what you want, Jim?” Brooks' first feature since 2010's How Do You Know isn't the worst picture of 2025. It's quite possibly the strangest, though, and suggests that not only has Brooks not made a film in 15 years, but perhaps hasn't seen a film in 15 years.
Right from the start, everything about Ella McCay is a little off-kilter, and that's not counting our titular American being played, with acceptable charm and the most geographically generic of accents, by British-French actor Emma Mackey. (Forget those dueling New York critics – the similarity between “Ella McCay” and “Emma Mackey,” which Brooks claims was happenstance, is downright freakish.) We're introduced to Ella by her longstanding assistant Estelle, whose direct, fourth-wall-breaking narration is quaint, but hardly unwelcome, given that Estelle is played by entertainment icon Julie Kavner. In her first on-camera role in 19 years, the voice of Marge Simpson explains that Ella is the 34-year-old lieutenant governor of a state that will go pointedly unnamed throughout the movie, as will the name of the city housing the capitol offices. (As Brooks is co-creator of The Simpsons, I'm thinking this tale must unfurl in the everywhere/nowhere of Springfield USA.) Estelle is, however, particular about the year of the film, which is 2008 – back when, she says, “we all still liked each other.” Ummm … I'm sorry? We all liked each other the year that Barack Obama first ran for president? Because I sure wasn't given that info at the time – nor, I'd imagine, did word get out to employees of CNN and FOX News. So Brooks starts out by presenting us with an unspecified city in an unspecified state, in what is clearly a make-believe era. Events, amazingly, only get more confounding from there.
Ella is quickly revealed to be a prototypical Brooks heroine in the manner of Mary Tyler Moore's Mary Richards and Holly Hunter's Jane Craig: witty, idealistic, and moral to a fault; terrific at her job; a mess in her personal life. A deeply invested policy wonk, Ella learns that the governor (Albert Brooks, giving the film's only human performance) is resigning and accepting a White House cabinet position – not that, you know, the incoming president's name is ever uttered. Consequently, Ella will take over as Springfield USA's anointed governor for 14 months, a promotion that thrills her evidently loving husband Ryan (Jack Lowden) to no end. But can Ella really Have It All?
Her colleagues, whom I presume are Democrats even though that's never stated outright, are exhausted by the new governor's long-winded discourse on aid for single mothers and dental care for children. (That monster!) Her opponents fold their arms and boo at her inauguration. (2008: the year we all liked each other!) And troubling the governor most is a shady reporter, whom we never meet, extorting Ella for discovering that she and Ryan routinely borrow a vacant apartment for lunchtime “marital relations” – the film's phrasing, not mine – on government property. I'm sorry, but can I throw in another “I'm sorry?” at this point? Sure, maybe there's a misdemeanor in there somewhere. But this blackmailer is gonna destroy Ella's public standing, and potentially her entire career, by revealing that she has sex with her husband?! A Gary Hart-level scandal this is not. Unfortunately, there's no one around to tell Ella to simply chill, because she doesn't have friends. (Not even her narrator fan Estelle is a confidante.) She does have a slavishly devoted chauffeur, a state trooper played by Kumail Nanjiani, who's awkwardly presented as a not-quite future love interest. Otherwise, though, the woman only has family – and as someone's adage no doubt goes, “With family like this, who needs enemies?”
True, the governor adores her Aunt Helen, who, following the death of Elle'a monther, raised her niece from her teen years. But as portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis, Helen is also a hypochondriacal, if well-meaning, busybody whose every utterance sounds like a tired punchline from a third-rate sitcom. Ella has an absentee, newly returned father, whom Woody Harrelson plays without an iota of charm. She has a younger brother named Casey, whom I think is meant to be an adorable eccentric, but instead comes off, in Spike Fearn's twitchy performance, as a fledgling serial killer. And she has Ryan, so full of excitable warmth at the start that it feels ludicrously inapt – almost as if several previous scenes went missing – when Helen calls Ella's high-school-beau-turned-hubby “a ticking time bomb,” putting the nail on the guy's coffin by accusing this pizzeria heir of watering down his tomato sauce. Watery sauce is assuredly a crime against food. But it's hardly a crime against nature, and with Curtis shouting her pizza-centric tirade over the phone, Ella's purported bedrock Helen seems destined to spend her remaining years in a padded cell.
Then again, maybe it was just the gas leak, because nothing that happens in Ella McCay makes a modicum of sense. In addition to the queries already presented: Why does beloved Aunt Helen ambush Ella with the sudden appearance of her father after 13 years away, when she could easily have called the woman and warned her of his arrival? Why would Dad be in danger of losing his new fiancée – like so many others, a wholly off-screen figure – if he doesn't reconcile with his adult kids? Why would Casey's depression over being dumped lead to him becoming an agoraphobe? Why, after 13 months of no contact, would his ex-girlfriend have no problem with him suddenly showing up at her door? Why would she let him in her apartment? Why oh why is this insulting role played by Ayo Edebiri?!? Why is there a long comedic monologue, with accompanying tears, for Nanjiani's fellow trooper when this minor character has literally no impact on the story? (Oh right … probably because he's played by the director's son Joey Brooks.) Why does the great Becky Ann Baker, for one scene, show up as a pizzeria magnate apparently modeled on Livia Soprano? And for the love of all that's holy, what's with Ryan's out-of-nowhere character reversal that not only makes Helen's bonkers assessment ring true, but suggests that Ella's husband had Machiavellian intent from the age of 17?
Watching this thing, you feel like you're losing your mind, and can practically hear your brain cells dying with every lunatic plot progression and lame wisecrack and misguided acting choice. How can this possibly be the work of James L. Brooks? Yes, How Do You Know was awfully weak, and Spanglish and I'll Do Anything were somehow worse. But still. Boatloads of deserved Emmys for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi and The Simpsons! Three Academy Awards, for him personally, for Terms of Endearment! Workplace- and romantic-comedy standard bearer Broadcast News! Lou Grant! The Tracey Ullman Show! As Good as It Gets!
Emma McKay is about as bad as it gets. Yet because it's a Brooks, and looks and sounds enough like a Brooks of yore (with composer Hans Zimmer adequately replicating Bill Conti's twinkly Broadcast News score), I still can't get myself to hate it. There's a nutty time-capsule quality to the project that's endearing almost despite itself, Albert Brooks (no relation to his writer/director) is consistently appealing as the down-to-earth exiting governor, and it's hard to turn up your nose to a movie in which, from moment to moment, literally anything can happen. I'm still praying that 85-year-old James L. has at least one more feature film in him. Oscar-winning directors have surely ended their careers on worse than Ella McCay. But it's beyond depressing to consider what those examples might be.
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT
Hard as it is to believe, there was a time in which certain movies were actually picketed for their presumed depravity. William Friedkin's notorious Cruising, in 1980, inspired gay-rights advocates to wave placards against the film fetishizing the murder of homosexuals, while others were offended that the gay “lifestyle” was being represented on screen at all. Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ reached a fever pitch of handmade-sign uproar long before the 1988 movie ever screened, its haters railing against any work that would imagine Jesus as a human being (and, not tangentially, a man who would make love to Mary Magdelene). And in 1984, director Charles E. Sellier Jr.'s slasher flick Silent Night, Deadly Night was publicly, visibly scorned for daring to present Santa Claus as a serial killer – no matter that the killer wasn't Santa, but just some poor orphaned kid whose very specific trauma led to him donning a St. Nick suit that evidently matched well with his ax.
Nowadays, of course, it's doubtful that anyone would consider picketing … well, any film, really. Certainly not a low-rent Santa-as-slayer trifle, considering Silent Night's 1984 original led to four sequels, a 2012 remake, and David Harbour as an actually murderous Claus in 2022's gruesome action comedy Violent Night. So now we have writer/director Mike P. Nelson's Silent Night, Deadly Night reboot, which I managed to see without crossing a line of protesters. With all due respect to those who might still consider its premise revolting, if not actively irresponsible, the movie is kinda terrific. Following the '84 narrative with fidelity despite a few alterations and the pronounced addition of a supernatural angle, Nelson's unrated indie is surprisingly moral and even somewhat touching, this supremely solid B-picture by multimedia company Bloody Disgusting less reminiscent of Terrifier 3 than of Venom – or even, if you want to get highfalutin about it, Best Picture winner Birdman.
Again, our hero/villain is Billy Chapman (played as an 18-year-old by Rohan Campbell), who witnesses the childhood murder of his parents by a dude in a Santa suit. Again, the kid grows up to become a homicidal dude in a Santa suit himself, our first view of adult Billy finding him departing the motel room at which his most recent victim lies in the bathtub. Yet we quickly learn that, at the time of his parents' killings, the soul of their executioner Charlie (Mark Acheson) effectively entered Billy's body, and is annually instructing him toward an Advent calendar of December executions, punishing the naughty and sparing the nice. This is demonstrated, by Nelson, in having Charlie routinely engage in conversation with his literal inner demon, a conceit that proves both amusing (à la Venom and Birdman) and unexpectedly empathy-producing. As we're repeatedly reminded, only the naughty – the really, really naughty – are set up for the kill, and that lends a weird type of nobility to Billy's actions. He'll protect his new trinket-shop co-worker crush Pamela (Ruby Modine) and her sweet dad (David Lawrence Brown) to his last day. But that aging, handsy creep at the store and the attendees of that neo-Nazi Christmas party? They've got to go.
Truth be told, I was hoping for more splatter – or rather, more inventive splatter – than Nelson's feature delivered. While there's a lot of bloodshed, almost none of it is presented memorably; even the staging of that ultimately corpse-filled neo-Nazi bash is disappointingly humdrum. But Nelson's movie is still genuinely funny when it should be, admirably vicious when it needs to be, and legit affecting when you don't think it'll be, and Billy portrayer Campbell (the babysitter-turned-bad in Halloween Ends) is truly first-rate. He's blessedly ordinary-looking and a little stocky, if not chubby – you can easily imagine Cooper Hoffman in the role – and his sincerity and sweetheart smile keep you in Billy's corner from moment one. For her part, Modine matches Campbell ideally, their mutually eccentric other-ness and shared charisma give this “depraved” outing the almost-wholesome appeal of a 21st-century rom-com. I had loads of unanticipated fun at Silent Night, Deadly Night, and wouldn't be at all bothered to see a continuation during another yuletide season down the line. That being said, any holiday-themed sequel would almost certainly be preferable to a followup to …
OH. WHAT. FUN.
I do my best to avoid the myriad of newly streaming Christmas comedies the way others avoid Santa-with-an-ax gore-fests, generally only breaking my vow of disinterest for titles that look like truly unforgettable monstrosities: the Will Ferrell/Ryan Reynolds Spirited, or the snowman-comes-to-life lunacy of Hot Frosty. (Spirited was indeed wretched; Hot Frosty, dammit, was disappointingly inoffensive.) But Oh. What. Fun., which recently began streaming on Prime Video, genuinely piqued my interest.
To begin with, it was directed and co-written by Michael Showalter, who may not yet have helmed a masterpiece, but whose wholly worthy credits include The Big Sick, Spoiler Alert, The Idea of You, and two-time Oscar-winner The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The movie's lead was Michelle Pfeiffer, whom, for the better part of four decades, I have argued should be the lead in every movie released from now until her, or Hollywood's, passing. And the supporting cast, especially for a streaming debut, was truly ridic. Two-time Oscar nominee Felicity Jones, Oscar nominee Danielle Brooks. Jason Schwartzman. Denis Leary, Chloë Grace Moretz. Dominic Sessa. Eva Longoria. Reservation Dogs' Devery Jacobs. Euphoria's Maude Apatow. Freaking Joan Chen. How bad could this thing possibly be?
Sweet Jesus, I had no idea. If James L. Brooks' Ella McCay is a movie some of us might feel sorry for, Showalter's Oh. What. Fun. is a movie some of us might feel aggressively hostile toward, if only because Pfeiffer appears to be the only one involved actively trying. But even her character is trying – intensely trying. In essence, this atrocity co-written by Chandler Baker is Home Alone if Pfeiffer played the Macaulay Culkin role, and if instead of waging war on neighborhood burglars, our protagonist went completely batshit insane. The story's entire arc revolves around the star's Texas homemaker Claire Clauster feeling typically overwhelmed when her family descends at Christmas, and subsequently embarking on an ill-advised walkabout after her family, like Kevin McCallister's, accidentally forgets to bring her along on their travels. There are essential differences, though.
The Chicago-based McCallister clan left eight-year-old Kevin alone en route to Paris. Claire's clan, on Christmas Eve, leaves her en route to a holiday stage event a short drive away. Kevin, in 1990, didn't have access to his parents' cell-phone numbers; they didn't have cell phones. Claire, literally watching her family drive away without her, doesn't think to call any of the half-dozen-plus numbers available to her, reveal their oversight, and ask them to kindly drive 'round the block to pick her up; she goes home and wails “Hello?! Is anyone here?!” like the dipstick heroine of a horror movie. Then she cries, and in retribution for the perceived insult, drives cross-country to a taping of her favorite daytime talk show that's airing a live episode on Christmas Day featuring winners of the “Mother of the Year” contest that Claire's ungrateful kids didn't submit her for. Eventually, miraculously, she easily bypasses security and gains access to the studio, makes a public fool of herself, and becomes a media darling. I swear to God that pint-size Macaulay smacking Daniel Stern in the face with an anvil required less suspension of disbelief.
Look. I know the movie's chief demographic isn't expecting realism, and there is something to be said for Claire's off-screen narration detailing how most Christmas stories are primarily devoted to dads at the expense of moms: It's a Wonderful Life, National Lampoon's Vacation, et cetera. But Oh. What. Fun. is clichéd and terrible enough to make you grateful there aren't more yuletide releases about harried matriarchs, and that should be the last feeling Showalter's sickly holiday sweet should want to elicit. Long-suffering Claire is effectively applauded for every noxious thing her character does, from her cruel (and pretty racist) treatment of Chen's across-the-street neighbor to her committing a felony at the local mall (shoplifting an expensive tchotchke and getting away with it) to her dropping the F-bomb on national television. (Longoria's show host, naturally, finds this serious FCC violation delightful and refreshing.) It's a movie seemingly written by, and for, psychopaths, or at least those functional ones who'll root for its heroine regardless of her every repellent, occasionally criminal activity because her kids don't think to bring side dishes for their annual Christmas dinner.
Nothing would make me happier than to not blame Pfeiffer for any of the film's failings, especially considering there's already more than enough blame to go around. Beyond the plotting that requires Claire to be a grade-A, talk-show-obsessed nincompoop from minute one, the staging is almost jaw-droppingly amateurish, particularly in the sequence that finds Claire and her daughter trying to evade mall cops while racing home with that purloined holiday gift. (To my knowledge, Showalter has never before attempted a comedic action scene, but he should probably never attempt one again.) Meanwhile, the supporting cast is universally ill-served, with Moretz at maximum sardonic annoyance, and the formerly promising Holdovers co-star Sessa, so soon after Now You See Me: Now You Don't, continuing to suggest that “pissy” is the only weapon in his performance arsenal. Yet in seemingly doing her best to salvage things, Pfeiffer actually makes everything worse. She employs a Texas accent (unconvincingly) when no one else bothers. She strives for emotional truth in scenes that are nothing but sitcom contrivance. She cries genuine tears when everyone around her is on auto-pilot. Through dint of expected professionalism and glorious talent, Michelle Pfeiffer exposes the rotten hollowness of Oh. What. Fun., and accidentally makes the film a more hateful watch than it would've been without her. It's ho-ho-horrible.
