Late Night
Mindy Kaling seems to have two primary and conflicting impulses with much of her material: On the one hand, a push toward refreshingly honest and comedic conversations about race, gender and class; on the other, a love of standard pop cultural mandates that tend to compete with these previous convictions. From her early days as a writer/performer/producer on The Office to her own TV show (The Mindy Project), she has always tried to reach an equilibrium between her eye for original, often acerbic human interaction, with her adoration of syrupy pop convention. Naturally, this is a very delicate balance to maintain, and when she pulls it off, it can have the simultaneous effect of making her political point while
also being entertainingly light on its feet; when she slips, it’s almost always toward maddening conventionality.
This film, which she wrote and stars in, concerns a nearly washed-up late night talk show host, Katherine Newbury (played brilliantly by Emma Thompson),
in desperate need of new ideas and fresh material, who hires the completely unqualified Molly (Kaling) to add diversity to her writers room. Once, Katherine, a displaced Brit with a natural snootiness to her bearing, was a ratings beast, but over the years, as her psychic and emotional fire has reverted to an ashy smolder, she has come to rely too much on her own scathing aesthetic, and closed herself off from anything that challenges her own formidable authority.
Dubbed “America’s least favorite aunt,” she’s wallowing in her past glories, more or less marking time until she can retire with her beloved husband (John Lithgow), and be done with the whole business for good. Molly’s infusion of vitality and propensity to challenge standard norms brings chaos to Katherine’s life, which she at first combats angrily before finally coming to see the error of her ways. Her trajectory toward career oblivion interrupted, she has no choice but to finally face herself and identify her own failings in order to return to relevancy.
Molly, meanwhile, coming from a determinedly non-entertainment background (previously, she worked an industrial job, and before landing this gig, had no formal comedy writing experience), has her own obstacles to confront, from the inherent sexism in a workforce consisting of her and a bunch of white bros, to a demanding and often acerbic boss prone to firing people on a whim, to the various pulls and pushes of romantic possibility among some of the writers.
There’s some good character work here between Molly and Katherine — if nothing else, this should bring much deserved visibility for the criminally underused Thompson — and more than a handful of solid gags, but there are also an equal number of vaguely grating bits with Molly interacting with the male staff — she dates one who turns out to be a cad; while the one that hated her the most … you get the idea — and a propensity to utilize a sort of emotional deus ex machina to have her characters get their way in the end. Lessons are learned, hugs are employed, and everyone ends up better for the experience. Predictions are that it will be a hit, and that might well be the case, but with Kaling’s wit and sharp satiric ability, it feels more of a lost opportunity than anything else.