Delayed Reaction: The Late Shift

The Pitch: Who has a Leno, Letterman, or Carson impression ready?

Sometimes, the decision to see a movie is as simple as thinking it was another movie, then being too lazy to turn it off when you realize your mistake. You see, I meant to watch the Ron Howard movie, Night Shift, and got confused. So, instead, I got this mostly forgettable TV-movie about the Jay Leno/David Letterman debacle after Johnny Carson retired from The Tonight Show.

At this point, the movie is almost completely unneeded for me. I'm a nerd about this stuff. I haven't read the book that shares the name with this movie, but I have read Warren Littlefield's book about NBC in the 90's and Bill Carter's follow-up, The War For Late Night, about the Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien debacle. I knew most of the major players in this movie already and the beats of the story. The fun for me was in how well it was cast. John Michael Higgins and Daniel Roubuck do what they can to mimic Letterman and Leno respectably. It's a tall order though. Those two men have singular presences. I love seeing how, between Seinfeld and this, Bob Balaban cornered the market on playing Warren Littlefield-types. Only Kathy Bates' work as Leno's cutthroat agent was all that remarkable.

Overall, the movie tried to play nice and suffered for it. No one really comes away looking bad or even multi-dimensional. It's shot in an anonymous manner, with the TV-movie "house style" that could've been made by any TV director in the mid-90s. It's not even 90 minutes though, so it's hard to get all that up in
arms about wasted time though. For such a minimal investment, it's fine.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend