Written and Directed by James L. Brooks | 115 min | ▲▲▲1/2

So, for those who don’t know, James L. Brooks is a Hollywood legend. He’s worked in TV and film going back to the mid-1960s, and directed Oscar-winning fare like Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good As It Gets, while executive producing The Simpsons. It’s been a lot of years since he made a feature film, which might be why this one feels like such a throwback. That’s no criticism, but instead just an acknowledgement that this kind of movie has largely migrated to series TV. It’s a story about a driven politician who gets a huge professional opportunity only to find herself hamstrung by her husband and various  family members.  There is nothing wrong with these kinds of stories on the big screen, especially if they’re perfectly cast and well-performed, like this one.

That’s not to say this is a perfect film, and I’ll get into the issues that knocks it down a few grades in my book, but the critical bashing Ella McCay has received feels rude and outsized given the warm feelings it provoked in this reviewer.

The titular Ella is played by the similarly named British actor, Emma Mackey, who audiences might know from Barbie, Death On The Nile, or the series Sex Education. She just glows here as a typically vivacious Brooksian heroine who has in some ways overcompensated for her lingering family trauma. Her father (Woody Harrelson) is a serial philanderer who cheated on her mother (Rebecca Hall) even while she was dying. Teenaged Ella went to live with her forthright aunt, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis, wonderfully volcanic).

Now Ella is in her 30s and married to restaurateur Ryan (Jack Lowden), who wooed her with his work ethic and enthusiasm, despite Helen’s reservations. This while Ella’s little brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), has become an agoraphobe but gets to work from home so that’s fine, though his mental health sabotaged his relationship with possible girlfriend Susan (a one-scene cameo from Ayo Edebiri), and Ella’s still plenty concerned about him. Ella works as the lieutenant governor to Bill (Albert Brooks, whose hair and make-up artists are doing him no favours), and Bill’s just accepted a cabinet position in Washington, so Ella’s going to be the new governor. The movie takes place over the first three days of her governorship, all narrated by her admin assistant (the unmistakable Julie Kavner).

The throwback element of this is partly in its talky, dramedy style, another Brooks hallmark, and its undeniable wholesomeness. Both Ella and Ryan pant slightly and say “gosh” offscreen as we arrive at a scene of cuddly postcoital conversation, like we just stepped onto the set of a ’70s sitcom like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which Brooks also produced. We also have a constant and irritating score under all of the dialogue to help make sure we know how to feel about what’s being talked about, and an odd subplot about a reporter looking to extort access to the new governor by threatening to publish damaging information about her and and her husband that feels so quaint it’s hard to believe anyone would take it seriously.

But not all of that wholesomeness is cheese. McCay’s enthusiasm for the minutia of her work as a public servant entirely endearing. Yes, in this era of Trumpian politics it might seem anachronistic, but it still appeals. If this movie hadn’t bombed, this easily could’ve been a star-making role for Mackey, and all the actors around her step up to the plate and hit at least a single. A nice surprise is Kumail Nanjiani as Ella’s security detail — though a subplot about another guy on the security detail angling for overtime could easily have been cut as it never pays off.

Ella McCay is exactly the kind of movie audiences complain doesn’t get made anymore, and then when it does people don’t go to see it. That’s a depressing reality of today’s Hollywood, but we can keep our fingers crossed it finds an interested viewership on one of the ubiquitous streaming services.