A disappointing 'Ella McCay'

 

 If you have fond memories of Terms of Endearment,  Broadcast News, and Good As It Gets, you've probably been looking forward to a new movie from director James L. Brooks. 

  No slouch as a writer/director, Brooks not only directed the three movies I mentioned, he also played a role in creating the landmark TV comedies, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi.  Additionally, he's known as a creator and developer of The Simpsons.

 Ella McCay is Brooks's first movie since 2010's How Do You Know, which wasn't greeted with much enthusiasm. Still, as an admirer of Brooks's ability to create memorable characters in movies that hit plenty of strong notes, I was hoping for a bullseye.

  Aside from enjoying the always-welcome presence of Albert Brooks -- this time as a governor who resigns his position to take a job as Secretary of the Interior -- I spent much of Ella McCay fighting off disappointment. I expected a movie that spoke to the moment, and found one that seemed to have been taken from the day-old cinematic shelf.  

   Set in 2008, the movie gives a major role to Emma Mackey (Netflix's Sex Education). Mackey plays the title character, an amped-up policy wonk. As  a 34-year-old lieutenant governor, Ella lands the governor's job when Brooks' s character departs for Washington. 

   If you're looking for intermittent displays of charm, Mackey's performance may hit the spot, but the character she's playing didn't strike me as intriguing  enough to carry the film past Ella's commitment to   political pablum: She wants to help mothers and children.

   Perhaps to add some conflict, Brooks adds wrinkles involving a misuse of government property and the brewing jealousy of Ella's increasingly bitter husband (Jack Lowden). The owner of a pizza restaurant, Lowden's Ryan begins to resent his wife's success.

  A promising supporting cast can't put much spring into Ella McCay's step, either. Jamie Lee Curtis signs on as Ella's no-nonsense aunt, the woman who raised her. Woody Harrelson portrays Ella's philandering father, and Kumail Nanjiani plays Trooper Nash, the state cop who becomes Ella's loyal driver.

   Spike Fearn appears as Ella's brother Casey, a computer genius who's trying to win back the woman (Ayo Edebiri) he didn't know how to court. Brooks resolves the relationship a little too easily.

    Despite a variety of complications, the comedy often flatlines. We never learn what state Ella is governing, and her work as governor often plays second fiddle to her personal issues: coaxing her nerdy brother out of isolation, visiting her aunt, or dealing with her husband.

     No more need be said: My heart sank for Brooks, now 85, and for myself; I was hoping that Ella McCay would serve as a sparkling addendum to a strong career. What I got instead was what an admired editor I knew used to say when confronted with something he found wanting: "a tepid potato."

'After the Hunt' has its rewards

    Watching Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, a movie about a purported sexual assault in a high-stakes academic arena, put me in mind of David Mamet's Oleanna, a 1994 movie that dealt with betrayal and accusations between a student and teacher in a college setting. Oleanna was delivered with sharp elbows. After the Hunt deals with similar issues but plays in a less insistent register.

   Mamet took aim at the staunch MeToo inflexibility.  Guadagnino tries a more tempered approach, leaving key questions unanswered and focusing on the way an incident of abuse plays out at Yale in 2019.

    Working from a screenplay by Nora Garrett, Guadagnino begins his movie with a dark screen and what sounds like the ticking of a clock, perhaps to suggest that the characters we'll meet are about to undergo a severe test. 

   Rather than turning his movie into a MeToo screed or a rant against cancel culture excesses, Guadagnino focuses on how the ambitions of his characters become enmeshed in circumstances over which they steadily lose control.

    After the Hunt centers its story on a Yale philosophy professor (Julia Roberts) who's on the verge of receiving tenure, the gold ring on the academic carousel. Roberts' Alma has a flirtatious buddy relationship with another professor (Andrew Garfield) who's also seeking tenure in the philosophy department.

   Alma's psychiatrist husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) seems like a vestige from a relationship that formed when Alma was immature enough to idolize him. The glow has worn off, but the relationship staggers on.

   Ayo Edebiri plays Maggie, the movie's most problematic character, a gay graduate student who sets off a campus firestorm when she accuses Garfield's Hank of crossing a sexual line.

   Is the ambitious Maggie -- who is suspected of having plagiarized her doctoral thesis -- telling the truth? Having pegged Maggie as a rising star, will Alma continue to support her or give her friend the benefit of the doubt? Do donations made by Maggie's wealthy family prevent the truth from being uncovered? And why did Alma single out Maggie for special attention in the first place?

   Roberts conveys flinty credibility as a scholar who has mastered academic speak while struggling with inner torment. Alma occasionally doubles over with stomach pain. She harbors a secret that, as the movie progresses, becomes easier to guess.

 Garfield does what might be his best work yet as a gregarious scholar whose affability could conceal predatory behavior, and Stuhlbarg ably plays a man who, when feeling pressed, expresses his anger in childish ways.

   Chloe Sevigny offers additional support as an academic who serves a guidance role with students and faculty alike, smoothing ruffled feathers and providing mental health counseling.

   Some of Guadagnino's scenes bristle with tension, and it's a pleasure to watch Roberts sink her teeth into a role. In one of the movie's strongest scenes, she eviscerates Maggie for being a spoiled child of privilege. In another memorable moment, she skewers one of her students deeply enough to scar the kid for life.

   It’s possible, though, that the movie overdoes things. Maggie, for example, is Black, gay, and super-privileged, a loaded deck of traits that supposedly grants her immunity in a DEI-dominated world. 

  Some of Guadagnino's choices seem like self-conscious strains to establish the film's intellectual bona fides. Ambiguities about the nature of truth might have been clear without references to the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's arty score can be both intriguing and jarring.

   Beyond all that, sexual abuse and cancel culture aren't exactly the freshest of subjects.

   Still, I got caught up in the way Guadagnino and his cast create the insular bubble in which academic power games are played. The movie's pleasures derive from the ways in which Guadagnino finds the  blood and bile that boil beneath a surface of academic refinement. I may be pushing the point, but After the Hunt sometimes felt as if a high-class helping of pulp somehow had gotten into Yale.

Young gay women start a fight club

   If you haven't already, it's time you discovered Ayo Edebiri, the young comedian/actress who appeared earlier this summer in Theater Camp and who’s best known for her work in the acclaimed series, Bear.

  In Bear, Edebiri joins a beautiful ensemble as sous chef Sydney Adams. She scores again as a high school lesbian with a crush on a cheerleader in Bottoms, a risky comedy from director Emma Seligman, who directed the indie hit Shiva Baby.

   Working from a screenplay she wrote with Rachel Sennott, one of the movie’s stars, Seligman tells a boldly outlandish story about two   teens who feign a claim that they've experienced incarceration in “juvie.” Street cred established, they start a high school fight club for young women. 

   The duo wants to meet “hot” cheerleaders but sells the club as a feminist launching pad and mini-society for self-protection.

   Here, Seligman takes her biggest risk. The fight club is no feather-weight sham. These girls push and punch for real, usurping violent  strategies usually reserved for men. 

     The most obnoxious men in the movie are the school’s football players, who -- in blatant parodic fashion -- never take off their uniforms; even during classes, they refuse to shed the signature emblems of their identity.

    It’s far-fetched, of course, but Sennott, as the snarky PJ, and Edebiri, as the more wary Josie, are funny and engaging. They’re playing kids who have been tagged as “losers,” but both have an underlying sense of self that suggests they believe in their sensibilities, and the story eventually conspires to teach them that their adopted facades can be as much of a trap as football uniforms.

    Bottoms doesn't deal with the ways in which prejudice crushes young gay people. PG and Josie experience bigotry but they’re not isolated and they’re not jittery about declaring their sexual preferences. 

    Edebiri and Sennott, who starred in Shiva Baby, receive able support from Havana Rose Liu, as Isabel, the cheerleader girlfriend of the school’s principal jock (Nicholas Galitzine). Kala Gerber appears as Brittany, the cheerleader PJ is crushing on. 

     Ruby Cruz has a nice turn as Hazel, a club member who might be the most dangerously subversive of them all.

      Marshawn Lynch was never known for making public statements during his NFL career. Here,  the erstwhile Seattle star, known a plays a high school history teacher who accepts the role of faculty adviser to the fight club. Yes, he’s funny.

      Even ambitious comedies need plots and I wouldn’t say that Bottoms excels when it comes to storytelling, even though it stages an explosive finale with a riotous flavor that banishes any lingering thoughts of credibility.

      The physical violence — between club members and those deemed as antagonists — can cut against the comic grain. People really seem to get hurt; that may be part of Seligman’s strategy. She’s intent on upsetting an apple cart full of cliches about young women.

    Seligman eventually softens the proceedings to allow for genuine expression of emotion, a ploy that flirts with genre cliche.

    At  other times, the movie seems to be straining. Note the inclusion of a horny mom  (Dagmara Dominczyk) who's having an affair with Galitzine's high-school hunk of a character.

    Not everything about the movie works but Seligman, Sennott and Edebiri are onto something and, like the characters they play, they’re ready to make their mark, even if it leaves a few bruises.