“Ella McCay” is a blandly-titled collection of randomly-scripted expressions of feelings, political frustration, character failings and over-acted monologues interrupting insufferable and incessant voice-over narration.

Its two tedious and under-edited hours play like an aimless attempt at a feel good streaming series most of us would go out of our way to avoid.

We don’t need reminding that “Terms of Endearment”/”As Good as It Gets” director James L. Brooks hasn’t made a movie worth seeing in this millenium. But his heart and motivations are in the right place, with a message that tracks all the way back to “Broadcast News.”

A whole lot of what’s wrong and why we “hate each other” in America stems from a male fear of smart, idealistic and ambitious women.

But this well-intentioned dramedy goes wrong right from the start and careens downhill from there.

Emma Mackey has the title role, playing first a wise and articulate beyond-her-years teen and later as an idealistic politico pushing a benefits-for “Mom Bill” and Tooth Tutor (visiting rutal families to pass out toothpaste, toothbrushes and dental visits to kids) initiatives as the youngest Lieutenant Governor her state has ever had.

The movie is about what Ella had to overcome to get there and her uncompromising “annoying” image that threaten to be her downfall just as she’s promoted to governor.

Brooks favorite Julie Kavner (he produces “The Simpsons”) is our aged on camera and off narrator, the governor-to-be’s secretary and gate-keeper and longtime state employee. Estelle remembers Ella’s idealistic youth as “a better time. We all still liked each other.”

Ella was the teen who confronted her feckless, philandering father (Woody Harrelson) and his enabling wife, her mother (Rebecca Miller) who holds onto the marriage against all logic.

“Please God, spare me LOVE,” teen Ella declares. But she isn’t spared.

Growing up with her fiesty tavern-owner Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) Ella finds a future husband (Jack Lowden) in high school, a guy who feeds her ego and supports her unconditionally, as he sees a great future for her.

Adult Ella lost her mother, is estranged from her father and barely in contact with her online gambling guru/agoraphoic brother (Spike Fearn). “Ella McCay” is about a cascade of personal and political crises that descend on her the minute the popular governor (Albert Brooks) accepts a cabinet appointment in Washington.

He’s the one who reminds her how “annoying” a smart policy wonk like her is among politicos that spend all their time raising money to get themselves re-elected. And she is young and smart enough to point out to him why America descended into gridlock long before it embraced fascism.

“You can’t be popular and FIX anything!”

Ella staggers from one time-sucking personal-becomes-political crisis after another with only her aunt and her state police driver (Kumail Nanjiani) to confide in. Literally every other man in her life is a lifelong problem (her self-serving/”forgiveness” begging father) or fresh set of political and personal fires to fight.

Writer/director Brooks takes time from the new governor’s frantic day to have her check in on her on-the-spectrum brother, who wonders if the girl (Ayo Edeberi) who couldn’t handle his “weird” ways a year ago might like to get back together.

That needy dad is back in her life begging for a favor. And her rock, that husband? He’s a little too happy about her promotion and what that means to his bottom line and status.

Curtis and Albert Brooks come off the best among the cast, two old pros who know when “less is more” screen acting is called for, and when to errupt. They do not pass this hard-won knowledge on to Mackey, a Brit starlet (“Death on the Nile,” “Emily,” “Barbie”) directed into broad, close-up TV sitcom acting by James L. Brooks.

Mackey, coiffed and made up as Anne Hathaway 2.0, masters the accent. But every long-held close-up is so fussy, with so many tics and mannerisms and so much acting “business” as to make us wonder if she was on an energy drink binge during the shoot.

Nanjiani’s moral, ethical and nice-to-the-point-of-squishy character doesn’t resemble any state trooper in any state you ever heard of.

Harrelson plays a cartoon straight out of his “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” “lovable villain” family member. A couple of other players come off even worse.

The entire enterprise is never a realistic/idealistic “solution” to our current state of affairs in the country.

Scripted attempts to both criticize and justify what’s going on in government and the press at the moment without any effort to acknowledge the frauds in office beholden to forces who don’t want justice, fair play or anyhing “fixed” or the fools fooled into voting for them.are half-assed, at best.

Frankly, Brooks would have been better served rewatching political episodes of “The Simpsons” than consulting whatever bubble of pals he listened to in formulating this feel-good “fix.”

Not every filmmaker is a Hitchcock, Lean, Hawks or Ford who could end their careers with works they wouldn’t be ashamed of. Brooks, at 88, is a tad late to the “message” movie game. He has the civic-mindedness to try and address this fraught “moment” with a movie. But like Rob Reiner and legions of other contemporaries he’s no longer got what it takes to wrap that message in a movie.

Rating: PG-13, profanity, drug content,

Cast: Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julie Kavner, Kumail Nanjiani, Jack Lowden, Spike Fearn, Ayo Edeberi, Rebecca Hall, Woody Harrelson and Albert Brooks

Credits: Scripted and directed by James L. Brooks. A 20th Century Studios release.

Running time: 1:55