Late Night is a comedy (more on this later) about a late night talk show host Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) who is trying to revitalise her show and career. She hires Molly (Mindy Kaling) to the shows’s writing team in an attempt to breathe life into the material which had, until Molly’s arrival, been written by a team of men. Molly’s fresh perspective is an affront to the writing team and her honesty an affront to Katherine, who has terrified her team into a bunch of yes-men over many years.
The film is based on a screenplay by Kaling and directed by Nisha Ganatra. Regular readers will know I often don’t talk about the directors of films but in this case it’s relevant to my views in that there’s a whole lotta woman power behind this film and it made me want to love it and support it.
Sadly I can’t give this film a big pump-up. It’s a solid idea and excellent cast but the execution fell a bit flat for me. The laughs that are there are very good but there’s far too few and in moments where they tried to pull at some heart-strings (Katherine betrays her ill husband, played by John Lithgow) I just felt very little empathy. I hadn’t bought in and I didn’t care enough.
I actually looked the film up on the distributor’s website to see if they were selling it as a comedy, wondering if perhaps it was meant to be a funny drama and I’d misunderstood but nope, comedy it is. They claim.
Late Night isn’t terrible but it’s not as good or funny as I hoped it would be or as it could have been. It’s a pleasant enough film (say, three stars) but one which I’d be inclined to wait and see when it pops up on Netflix or similar.
I want to see more amazing films starring women, about women, created by women, celebrated by women but Late Night hasn’t given me enough to sing from the rooftops about. What a pity.
Here’s a three-star review in The Guardian if you want to read more.
Late Night is rated M, runs 102 minutes and is in cinemas now. Trailer here.