You know what? Emma Thompson would make a fantastic talk show host. So fantastic I might even watch her. Ok, probably not. I’d probably only watch it if she had a new hilarious take on how f***ed up the Trump administration is. I kid, but viewers of “The Daily Show” have a better understanding of fact than people get their information from Fox News -a fact, yes fact, which should surprise only Fox viewers- and my-oh-my is that a low bar. Anyhoo, Emma would make a pretty classy host, huh? I won’t say that’s lacking in Late Night TV by any stretch, but even my former moontime guru, David Letterman, could rarely be called “classy.”
Katherine Newbury (Thompson) has had a Late Night talk show for decades. It had been awarded and rewarded and then hit monotonous and dull. That was a decade ago. Now, Katherine’s show only appeals to people who would rather see an interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin than Katy Perry. Despite being literate, charming, and decidedly feminine in a male world, Katherine hasn’t busted through ceilings in years. Her show has stagnated; her life has stagnated; and she’s finally getting the memo.
Late Night takes no time addressing the dinosaur in the room: off-stage, Katherine is anything but charming. Her show is beginning to reflect her icy and aloof demeanor and the initial correction involves maybe having at least one writer who doesn’t look like he should be jeering at a Mets game. Seriously; they’re all white guys aged 30 to 50 and they write the same tired jokes again and again. Enter … Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling, who also wrote the film), a token diversity hire with no qualifications and a shitty interview. I’m not kidding here – if there is any part of you that believes life is easier for minorities (it isn’t. Period.) … if any part of you believes that in any form in any way, please walk out on the interview and subsequent hired scene; for the completely random folks who have, say, applied to literally hundreds of jobs in the past eighteen months and received zero (0) offers, these scenes will make you cry.
This is the meat of the film, of course: How can an inexperienced, unqualified noob turn the Katherine Newbury talk show morass and the ice queen herself back into a contemporary success? Well, it’s gonna take some time. Katherine has to be introduced to her writers, whom she numbers out of frustration and discourtesy. She has a pretty thin skin, too, for a comedian. Not Trump thin, but during the film she fires a handful of subordinates for lack of loyalty – that’s quite a Trump-like quality, huh?
Predictably, the injection of Vitamin M is exactly what Katherine needs to become human again. (No word on Trump, yet.) And the improvements in the show are genuine improvements, not just movie inventions like where we all pretend we’d vote for Chris Rock or Robin Williams. Katherine’s new “White Savior” segment is both hilarious and poignant.
While the film is mostly about Molly and her struggling career, the bigger question becomes, “Do we really want Katherine and her Late Night show to succeed?” Here is a person who has held a coveted job in a cut-throat world for nearly three decades. Neither the show’s flavor nor the host’s personality demonstrate warmth or relevance. As an audience, we have a knee-jerk reaction because Katherine’s replacement is a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen, but what if her replacement were … somebody we didn’t find abhorrent? The film makes so many efforts to demonstrate the benefits of diversity and yet fails in the key position. What’s up with that?
I’m a fan of Mindy Kaling; I like her persona and her writing. I’m not sure this is the best of what she does; it seems like she had an axe to grind, and, Mindy, darling, you’re inadvertently humiliating any true job seekers out there. Trust me on this point. As for Emma Thompson, this is her best and most complicated role in years; I wouldn’t be surprised if there were genuine awards that followed. If it’s anybody but Emma Thompson, even, say, Helen Mirren or Judi Dench in this role, I would happily root for a different outcome. As is, I liked this film just enough to be happy with where it went.
Talk shows can be such confusion
Filling nights with TV pollution
While my eyes grow red
“Don’t worry!” she said
Mindy’s got a Kaling solution
Rated R, 102 Minutes
Director: Nisha Ganatra
Writer: Mindy Kaling
Genre: New-fangled feminism
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Fans of Mindy Kaling
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: MAGA
