Late Night (2019)

★★

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A late-night talk show host’s world is turned upside down when she hires her first and only female staff writer.

Classification: 15

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With this modern cultural climate, a film such as Late Night could be an interesting analysis of how our society views a plethora of growing topics. From gender equality, classism, generation gaps, sexism and the MeToo movement, director Nisha Ganatra and writer Mindy Kaling do the bare minimum in delivering about societies expectations from women no matter their station. Late Night does start strong in large part to Emma Thompson’s performance as Katherine Newbury; half Miranda Prieselty demon-boss and half vulnerable woman whose legacy is being taken from her. The duality of the performance gives real humanity to the character and makes her interactions with the supporting cast riveting especially with John Lithgow.

Kaling stars as Molly, a chemical plant worker turned late-night comedy writer is the foil for Thompson’s character. Again her character design brings more The Devil Wears Prada similarities as the focus of the drama and comedy is from Thompson and Kaling butting heads and finding common ground together. As the film progresses, the relationship becomes symbiotic as Newbury sees Molly as the only honest voice in the room who could save her show and Molly sees Newbury as the role model she needs to impress at all costs. This relationship both helps and hurts the characters as the story presses on and it shows that Late Night is really at its best when dealing with the drama over the comedy.

For a film about late-night comedy, the film isn’t particularly funny and while some of the comedy is intentionally supposed to be off-putting to display Newbury’s distaste for modern comedy, the moments when the film presents Newbury and Molly’s alternative aren’t any better. Late Night wants to rebrand Newbury’s persona with the more modern tropes of late-night comedy such as sketches in the vein of Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel and also to have her jokes become more personal and political. Very few of these moments seem to be an actual contribution to the story but instead the beginning of a checklist for how to progress to the end of the film. Newbury is now like Fallon! hurray and now to proceed to the third act drama and credits.

A lot of the latter half of Late Night divulges into predictable romantic comedy clichés and wants to use modern headlines to create a parable for audiences to feel comfortable with. While Thompson does very well in those scenes, again every moment she has with John Lithgow is a standout, the way the script plays makes it strange that this how the film plays out its climax. There seems to be a lot of missed potential with Late Night from the examination of the themes, originality of the characters and the culmination of its dramatic storylines.

One of the most interesting elements of Late Night is that a figure like Katherine Newbury has never really existed. A woman has never hosted a late-night talk show in America, while the audience is supposed to compare her to figures such as Letterman or maybe even Carson. It’s a shame that the story crafted for her and for Molly never goes beyond the standard and does nothing surprising with its material and its examinations of our society. While Thompson is vibrant from beginning to end, Late Night never becomes the intelligent critique it wishes it could be.

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Director: #NishaGanatra

Cast: #EmmaThompson, #MindyKaling, #MaxCasella, #HughDancy, #JohnLithgow, #DenisOHare, #ReidScott, #AmyRyan

Release Date: June 7th 2019

Trailer:

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Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews

Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database