Late Night (2019, R)

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.