Movie Reaction: Late Night

Formula: Working Girl + The King of Comedy

Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) is an institution. She's won dozens of Emmys for her late night talk show that she's been running for nearly 28 years. She's won virtually every prize in comedy a person could win. Her comedy inspired a generation of comedians. She's also grown set in her ways, refusing to engage with the current generation or modern technology like Twitter or Facebook (or that new thing kids these days do that I'm also too old to know about). Despite being one of the few female comedians at her level of success and influence, she's never cared about nurturing the next generation of female comedians. The writers room for her show reflects that: all white guys. Due to her stubbornness to change and complacency, Newbury is about to be forced out of her own show by the new head of the network (Amy Ryan). In order to combat this, Newbury hires a new writer with the only qualification being that she has to be a female. That female writer turns out to be Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling), whose last job was at a chemical treatment plant. With the help of Molly's new perspective on things, Newbury makes a final attempt to reinvent herself to save her job and maybe even be a better comedian.

OK, if I was to rank the celebrities that I'm rooting the hardest for, #1 would be Donald Glover, of course. He's an otherworldly talent. #2 is probably Mindy Kaling. Something about her I find so appealing. I like her as a writer, a performer, and a personality. When she can combine the three, the sky is the limit. Emma Thompson, on the other hand, doesn't need me to root for her. She's already made it, and she's, simply put, awesome. It helps that she's a key part of my favorite movie (Stranger Than Fiction), but even without that, she's confirming the "All Emmas Are Great" theory of Hollywood. Combining Mindy Kaling as a writer/co-star and Emma Thompson as a co-star in a movie about the comedy world is the kind of thing you'd find in my dream journal. It short, I was very ready for this movie.

It's not quite the mid-year frontrunner for my favorite movie of 2019 that I was hoping for, but it is quite an enjoyable movie. It's the rare opportunity for Thompson to mix her comedic talents with her more rigid dramatic persona. She's her own version of Miranda Preistly from The Devil Wears Prada, and I'm all for it. Kaling has always been at her best when she's writing for herself. The main reason I kept up with her uneven sitcom, The Mindy Project, for so long was the promise of at least one line every episode that only Kaling could pull off and cause me to laugh out loud. No doubt thanks to Thompson and Kaling's involvement, the supporting cast is rounded out by a lot of familiar comedy faces. John Lithgow has a surprisingly sweet role as Newbury's husband. Reid Scott, Hugh Dancy, and several others play different and familiar shades of insufferable as the assorted writers for Newbury's show. The movie juggles a few different stories quite nimbly.

I think I just wanted it to be a different movie. The version of the comedy world in this is much more targeted to the public. It's not particularly insider-y. The way Kaling's character gets her job isn't plausible. The movie is aware of this but can't stop it from lessening the authenticity of the world of the movie. Kathryn Newbury isn't built as a character who believably could carry her TV ratings for as long as she does. A "no internet" policy of jokes could barely work in 1999, let alone 2019. Even Carson would've had to change sooner than Newbury does. The timeline is too ambitious as well. It's only a couple months between Molly getting hired and Kathryn revamping her entire show. Molly even gets another job offer soon after. It's way too much for me to believe. Maybe this is like doctors who can't watch medical dramas. I'm just too close to the topic. The details that I was bothered by, I'm also certain Kaling and the director were aware of and chose to leave that way.

Zooming out a little, the movie just wasn't very funny when it was supposed to be. This has what TV people call the "Studio 60 problem". Studio 60 was a show about a fictional SNL. It spent a lot of time talking up the writers of the show within the show and how good that show could be, but whenever we got actual glimpses of the show, it was underwhelming. The same goes for a movie about a great painter whose art isn't very good when the audience sees it or when a classic song is promised that isn't memorable when it's finally played. In short, Kathryn Newbury almost never flexes her comedy muscles here. She supposedly got her start as a stand-up, but she isn't quick on her feet at all. Some of this is supposed to indicate her complacency, but even after she's changed, it's not a marked difference. Her transformation in the movie is more about her going from being mean to being nice. I'd assume the comedy problem with her character is that she's too high brow. Maybe she needs some vintage Dennis Miller stuff. The kind of 10% jokes that most people won't get. Instead, they just make her not that funny at first. That's a bad choice. More surprising was how little I loved Kaling's Molly. Kaling's always been amazing at writing for herself. Her comedic voice is my favorite thing about her. That's not really there in the Molly character. I'm guessing she didn't want Molly to upstage Kathryn and maybe even wanted to write a character a little different than herself (or her public persona). The problem might be that this is the most any character should resemble herself. And, Molly also has the problem that Newbury has of not even really proving her comedy chops. I believe that Molly has good critiques, that she's a very hard working, and she genuinely loves comedy. I don't have much evidence that she's that funny herself or as a writer.

Editing isn't something I normally talk about. That's because when it's done well, it's pretty invisible. My rating scale is: "competent" (good), "noticeable" (bad), and "showing off" (good but annoying). 90% or more of movies are competent, because I never think about the editing. I noticed Late Night's editing way too much. At times, the movie refuses to hold on a shot. I especially noticed this during one of the writers room scenes early on. It jumped ever second or two to a new shot, even in the middle of people talking. It was very distracting. There's also another scene where it's super clear that the two sides of a conversation weren't filmed at the same time. They shot Reid Scott from behind, cutting him off at the head. The body gestures of the characters didn't match up. It was sloppy in a way that I'm not used to noticing. I wonder what the story behind that was. No time for reshoots? Late rewrites?

I wish I had more glowing praise for the movie. My expectations got in the way of my enjoyment of it. It's an above average movie. Thompson's performance in particular is great. It's probably funnier than I'm giving it credit for. I wanted to love it and I only liked it.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend