I knew
this was an Amazon original, which, for some reason, I thought meant it’d be on
Prime right away – cue my disappointment when the movie came out and I realized
it was only in theaters, meaning I had to wait until its wider release before
I’d be able to see it. Given that I’ve
been rewatching old Mindy Project
episodes this summer, I was more than ready for it by the time it came to town.
Katherine
Newbury is a long-running late night host, with decades of experience and
dozens of Emmys to back her up. However,
success has made her complacent and she hasn’t adapted with the times. When she learns that the network is planning
to drop her for a hot new comic, she takes it upon herself to right the ship
and give the people what they want – whatever that might be. Around the same time, a recently-fired writer
accuses her of hating other women and points to her nonexistent female writing
staff as proof, leading her to direct her number two to hire a woman, any
woman, as a replacement. Entire Molly,
an aspiring comedy writer with an optimistic attitude, lots of ideas, and zero
TV-writing experience. Molly struggles
to make her dreams come true in the ball-busting, pressure-cooker environment
of Katherine’s writing staff.
I really
enjoyed this. Molly is a fun
protagonist, with a good mix of sunshiny naivete and genuine good
ideas/ambition, and she plays well off the prickly, demanding Katherine. Even if the beats are familiar – Katherine
hates Molly, then challenges Molly, then gains a grudging respect for Molly,
and so on – the clash and connection between the two characters is entertaining
to watch. And the individual story of
each is good too. I like the tug between
Katherine’s desperation not to lose her show and her elitist aversion to changing
up her format in any way to make it more appealing. As for Molly, it’s interesting that she’s a
very genuine “diversity hire” – she’s never worked on a TV show before and
doesn’t impress in her interview at all,
meaning she’s hired purely for the box she checks rather than her
qualifications – but even as she struggles to find her footing, she has
valuable contributions to make.
There’s
quite a bit of interesting stuff in here about the process of writing for a
late-night show, especially as it relates to women and people of color in
comedy. Molly is the only woman and the
only PoC on the writing staff and finds herself in a sea of white guys. She has to deal with their casual assumptions
about her lack of merit, their willful denial of their own privilege, and even
the fact that they’ve coopted the women’s bathroom for #2’s, being used to not
having women around to use it. But
despite all this crap (literally in the case of that last one,) she comes up
with jokes and bits that are completely off their radar, because they can’t see
through her eyes. Meanwhile, Katherine
is the only female late-night host on TV, but she shies away from that
identity, instead telling the same jokes all the male hosts tell in the same
ways that they tell them. Over the
years, she’s learned that the way to survive is to blend in with the men around
her, not stand out from them. When Molly
shows up, she instead urges Katherine to lean into who she is and what makes
her different.
Writer/star
Mindy Kaling is one of those actors who frequently sticks to characters within
a certain type, and even if I see all the similarities between Molly and Mindy
Lahiri (and, I’m sure, Kaling herself,) she plays it well. Molly is funny and fierce, simultaneously
overconfident and insecure, out of her element but fighting every inch to make
room for herself there. Emma Thompson
does her usual excellent work as Katherine, hard-edged and condescending but
vulnerable when no one’s watching; I like seeing the different sides she brings
out when Katherine’s in front of the camera, in the writers’ room, or at
home. The film additionally features
John Lithgow, Hugh Dancy (Will from Hannibal,)
and Denis O’Hare (who I’ll always remember best as Charles Guiteau in the
Broadway revival of Assassins.)
Warnings
Language,
sexual references, drinking/smoking, and thematic elements.
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