‘Ella McCay’ isn’t the real McCoy, relatable ‘Real Estate,’ and JFK Jr.’s ‘Love Story’

It’s not a great movie, though, and that’s too bad – although seeing it may give you some idea of how good he can be. Brooks began his career in television, and created three of the best comedy series of all time: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was a groundbreaking look at the life of a single woman; Taxi, about a bunch of cab drivers, with an amazing cast that included Judd Hirsch, Tony Danza, Andy Kaufman, Christopher Lloyd, Marilu Henner, and Danny DeVito; and The Simpsons, which is still running – and still funny – after 37 years.

Brooks also wrote and directed for the big screen, and made three of the funniest and most distinctive dramedies of all time: Terms of Endearment (1983), which won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Shirley MacLaine), and Best Supporting Actor (Jack Nicholson); Broadcast News (1987); and As Good As It Gets (1997), which won Oscars for Nicholson again and Helen Hunt.

Anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes of journalism should see Broadcast News, which is probably the movie I would take to a desert island if I could only have one. It features such unforgettable lines as, “Wouldn’t this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If ‘needy’ were a turn-on?”

The character who uttered this immortal line was played by Albert Brooks (no relation to the director), who is also in Ella McCay. The movie is the story of a sweet, earnest, nerdy young woman who suddenly finds herself the governor of a Midwestern state and must deal with political dealmaking she is too honest to handle and the simultaneous implosion of her personal life.

The movie has a great cast in addition to Brooks, who plays the former governor, and includes Jamie Lee Curtis (Freakier Friday) as the wise aunt we all wish we had; Julie Kavner (the voice of Marge on The Simpsons) as Ella’s loyal secretary; Spike Fearn as her introverted brother; Ayo Edebiri (who stars in The Bear) as her brother’s love interest; Woody Harrelson of Cheers as Ella’s philandering father; Jack Lowden from Slow Horses as her weak, egotistical husband; and Kumail Nanjiani from Silicon Valley as the state trooper assigned to protect her.

The cast is headed by Emma Mackey, a beautiful but rather inexpressive young British actress who was in Eiffel and Death on the Nile (where she played Gal Gadot’s rival). She is simply too gorgeous and too composed to be the lovable nerd the movie must have at its center. Unlike Holly Hunter, who played the pivotal female role in Broadcast News and who could convince us that her single-minded devotion to her job and her mixture of arrogance and insecurity could drive people away from her, Mackey just makes Ella super nice. And super nice, in a full-length movie, can become super annoying.

But Mackey is only one of the problems with the movie, which is really two stories squished together in a way that just doesn’t work. It’s meant to be a political comedy about an innocent in politics, like Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, filled with lovable, quirky eccentrics, and also a more psychologically minded story about a young woman who struggles with the trauma of her dysfunctional childhood, only to find that she has married a man who isn’t good enough for her and who worries about how to help her agoraphobic brother. It reels back and forth between the two and never really hits its stride.

This being a Brooks movie, there are a few good lines. Albert Brooks, as the ethically challenged governor, tells Ella, “To get anything done in this job, you have to make dumb people feel less dumb,” and her brother says, “Personally, I’ve decided to stop trying to be normal and pick something easier.” If this review has inspired you to seek out some movies by Brooks, you can stream As Good As It Gets on Netflix and Apple TV+ in Israel. Most of Brooks’s films are available abroad on Amazon Prime Video.

Here’s an example of the film’s humor. As the couple approaches a spotless and affordable apartment tower with an elevator, which is an indescribable contrast to their rundown building in Tel Aviv that has been condemned by the municipality, the husband, Adam (Leib Lev Levin), a food deliveryman and aspiring musician, says, “This place is the essence of everything that’s f***ed up about humanity. Doesn’t that bother you?” His very pregnant wife, Tamara (Victoria Rosovsky), replies, “Not at the moment. Can we go up, Che Guevara?”

Director/writer Anat Malz has made an amazing debut film that deals not only with apartment hunting, but also with the gap between our dreams and aspirations and our actual lives. If it were any other time, this movie would be playing in theaters and festivals all over the world, and it’s great that it’s now on Netflix.

Kennedy (Paul Anthony Kelly) obviously had his pick of women and had high-profile romances with Sarah Jessica Parker and Daryl Hannah (who is played by Dree Hemingway, Mariel’s daughter in the series), before he found Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon).

Bessette was a stylist and saleswoman for Calvin Klein, and the demanding designer has a significant role, played by Alessandro Nivola, who had a supporting part in The Brutalist. She lives in a world where everything is fabulous and everyone looks great, but somehow she doesn’t crave the limelight for herself, a big point in her favor in Kennedy’s eyes.

Much of the first three episodes that were released to the press focus on Kennedy’s relationship with his mother, Jackie Onassis (Naomi Watts, who is arguably the best Jackie impersonator on screen), particularly how she tries to guide him to finding a wife who will be a good partner for him after she is diagnosed with cancer. These scenes fit with what is known about Jackie: that she was a caring mother who helped her children emerge as unscathed as anyone could from the media circus they were born into.

Kelly, a newcomer, has the unenviable task of playing one of the 20th century’s handsomest men, who was known in the tabloid press as “The Hunk,” and does a decent job. Much less is known about Bessette except for her patrician good looks, and Pidgeon manages to give her some feistiness. Rumors were swirling at the time of their deaths in a 1999 plane crash – in which Kennedy was the pilot and Bessette and her sister were passengers – that the couple was on the verge of divorce.

The series deals with the rumors but plays them down, obviously, since it is called Love Story. Ryan Murphy was one of the executive producers, and the series is slick and watchable like all his ventures, including American Crime Story, Glee, and Feud. Among the directors are Max Winkler, Henry’s son, and Jesse Peretz, Marty’s son.