Thompson makes ‘Late Night’ worth watching

Emma Thompson is one of those treasures who elevates every film she’s in to varying degrees, sometimes to the level of an all-time classic, and other times just enough to make an otherwise missable movie worth catching. Such is the case with “Late Night,” a formulaic and uneven comedy given a needed boost by a commanding central performance.

Thompson plays Katherine Newbury, elder dame of the famed “Tonight With Katherine Newbury” show, a long-running late-night program that recalls the old guard (say, David Letterman). She’s a trailblazing legend but

‘Late Night’

Great Fair Nisha Ganatra. Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, John Lithgow.

R for language throughout and some sexual references.

Bad

Good Bomb

also an artifact of a bygone era, every night a new monologue riffing on current events and highbrow (read: boring) guests like Dianne Feinstein and Doris Kearns Goodwin. She’s bleeding viewers to her younger, hipper male competitors.

The staleness of her show could have something to do with the staleness of her writing room, filled exclusively with white 20- and 30-something slacker bros. It’s been so long since there was a woman on the staff, the men have taken to using the women’s restroom to do their dirtier bathroom deeds. And why not? There’s no one to complain.

Into this moment of corporate desperation waltzes Molly (Mindy Kaling), who’s used her connections at the chemical plant where she works to sweet talk her way into an interview. The gig is wildly out of her league, but sweet-natured and earnest Molly gets hired on the spot, such is the show’s need to improve the optics of its allwhite, all-male writer’s room.

Molly is sincere and guileless, a true foil for steely and withering Katherine. She reads articles on how to make a good impression on the first day of work, comes bearing gifts of cupcakes and hangs a cheesy motivational poster in her office without a hint of irony. Its message — “Never give up” — is one she’ll need to take to heart to survive this viper’s nest.

Oddly, it’s Kaling’s character who gets the short shrift in “Late Night” — odd, because Kaling wrote the script. Her own leading part should be a plum one, yet we’re seldom invited into Molly’s inner life. We are told about her extensive and involved family but are never introduced to them. She has no friends, and seemingly no desires but to make it big as comedy writer (though why, we have no idea). The script pairs her with workplace romantic interests with whom she has no chemistry because that’s the thing to do in a mainstream comedy with a single female lead, even when she professes to be monastically devoted to her career.

Katherine, though, has texture and pathos. A trailblazing woman who once headed the charge but is now struggling to adapt to the times, she cuts both an impressive and pathetic figure. Beyond the confines of Thompson’s performance, though, “Late Night” is rote. It’s ironic that a film about bucking formula is itself so formulaic. There’s nothing wrong with such inoffensive pleasantness, but if “Late Night” wants to advocate setting fire to the system in pursuit of more meaningful art, it should have led the charge.