Bombshell
★★★
The takedown of Fox News mogul Roger Ailes Dir: Jay Roach 1hr 49mins (15)
Well, this is unexpected, said Kevin Maher in The Times. Jay Roach, the director of Austin Powers – “the man who gave us fembots, Felicity Shagwell and a sexually transgressive secret agent who purrs, ‘Do I make you horny, baby?’” – has now made what may become the definitive film about the #MeToo movement. Bombshell tells the story of the women who brought down Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) for sexual harassment in 2016. It’s a serious subject, but what Roach has created is “a timely satirical takedown” that finds black humour in its challenging subject matter, while never “losing sight of its devastating repercussions”. The script is sprinkled with “exquisitely written bon mots”, and Ailes’s abuse is perhaps rendered shocking precisely because of the “wise-cracking japery that surrounds it”.
But ultimately, you cannot escape the story’s “uncomfortable contradictions”, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. Bombshell’s protagonists are women who – “with icy smiles and iron ambition” – willingly worked for a powerful network (owned by Rupert Murdoch) that “institutionalised” the harassment of women. Presented with the task of making “heroines out of characters that some will see as deeply compromised, if not outright villainous”, the film-makers opted for some clever casting. The women are played by Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie – all hugely talented stars, with feminist cred of their own. But the fact remains that although Kidman’s character, Gretchen Carlson, did eventually blow the whistle, these women tolerated abusive behaviour for years to further their careers. Had they ignored their own self-interest and sounded the alarm earlier, other women might have been spared. “Ailes was awful, but he also had a lot of help from the very women he made rich and famous.”
It is often the case that “topical tales hell-bent on catching a widespread mood” feel a bit “hasty and undigested”, said Anthony Lane in The New Yorker. And the tone is “all over the place”, said Simran Hans in The Observer. It is “grimly funny” in places, yet the performances are “utterly earnest”. And it takes great pains to “sand down” the politics of its central characters to make them more palatable (smoothing over Megyn Kelly’s racism and erasing Carlson’s homophobia). Instead of confronting these tensions, it “pats itself on the back” by ending with a note celebrating how these women “got the Murdochs to put the rights of women above profits, however temporarily”.