Late Night is worth the effort
Late Night (M, 102 mins) Directed by Nisha Ganatra Reviewed by James Croot ★★★1⁄2
For almost three decades, Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) has been the queen of talk. Winner of 43 Prime Time Emmy Awards and a recipient of the American Humour Award, the host of Tonight with Katherine Newbury
seemed untouchable – until now.
A steady decline in ratings and a public perception that her show is irrelevant and Newbury is out of touch, brings the news that the current season will most likely be her last. Newbury doesn’t take the news well.
‘‘People don’t want smart comedy, they want Kevin Hart on a slip’n’slide,’’ she laments, while defending her preference for politicians over social media stars as guests.
Likewise, while Newbury admits to being a 56-year-old Englishwoman who ‘‘has never given birth or seen a superhero movie’’, she’s not about to preside over a Celebrity Fitted Sheet Competition on her show. When it’s pointed out that a lack of females on her writing team could be part of the problem, Newbury charges her producer with ‘‘finding her one worth keeping’’.
Enter Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling), a quality control specialist at a chemical plant who has been a fan of the show since she was little.
Hired on a 13-week trial, most of her fellow writers don’t think she’ll last a fortnight, especially when confronted with a host who doesn’t think anything after 1995 is funny.
Written especially for Thompson (The Children Act, Bridget Jones’s Baby) by Kaling (The Office), and inspired by her own time as an intern with Conan O’brien, Late Night is a perfectly fine, periodically funny, if a little predictable, comedy.
Its main problem is that it is perhaps a little too overstuffed with ideas. Not only is it about saving the show and reinventing Newbury, it also has her facing a marital crisis and tries to throw in a bit of rom-com activity for good measure.
So while there are some clever gender-reversed twists on the old genre tropes, one can’t help feeling a more focused approach would have given the story more punch.
But it is a terrific vehicle for Thompson. She plays a deliciously complicated, flawed, acerbic character, and gets to portray the other side of her famous Love Actually scenario and send up her own new status as a Dame (‘‘just an old bag who takes too long in the checkout line’’).
And, as well as delivering plenty of cutting, often self-deprecating one-liners (‘‘Tom Cruise gets to fight The Mummy, I’m considered too old to play The Mummy’’), Thompson also gets some poignant scenes opposite John Lithgow (The Crown), who plays her husband.
Director Nisha Ganatra (Transparent, Brooklyn Nine-nine)
does a good job of allowing her two female leads to shine, but seems to occasionally struggle to make the tonal shifts seamless. At times, the transitions from broad comedy to political pointmaking and/or mature relationship drama jar.
However, there is enough onpoint humour to make Late Night
worth an evening out.