Mark Reviews Movies: LATE NIGHT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 6, 2019

As a behind-the-scenes look at the grind of orchestrating a long-running a television show, Late Night feels authentic—from the attitude, to the office politics, to the sense of apathy that comes from years of just accepting a general decline in quality. Screenwriter Mindy Kaling has written for a few TV programs, and even though none of them was a late-night talk show, one has to figure that at least some of this material has come from personal experience.

The biggest difference between scripted sitcoms, which serve as the most prominent writing gigs on Kaling's résumé, and a nightly variety program, which basically is what the late-night shows have always been (the comedic monologue, the sketches, the interviews with famous people, and the musical or comedy performances), probably would be the sense of constant and immediate pressure. The jokes have to come quicker. They have to be topical day by day. They have to be safe enough to avoid too much offense or broad enough to be seen as leveling offense equally. Once a writing staff figures out the correct formula to fulfill these requirements, the temptation to just start coasting must be strong.

In addition to writing the movie, Kaling plays Molly, a chemical factory worker, who more or less lucks into a job writing for a late-night talk show at a point when the show has been coasting for many years. The movie is her story at first. Molly navigates the resentment her fellow writers have for an eager upstart, the politics of being a woman of Indian descent in a writers' room filled with white men who are convinced she's nothing more than a diversity hire (Technically, she is, but the point of contention is the assumption and the failure even to consider that she might have something to offer), and the desire to make the show better against a creative culture that stopped caring about creativity a while ago.

For a while, all of this works to one degree or another because of that feeling of authenticity. The writers have checked out of their jobs. Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson), the show's host, hasn't talked to or even visited the writers in years, because a queen doesn't really care about the thoughts of the plebeians. The only thing keeping the ship afloat—a metaphor that Katherine despises and bans immediately when she finally deigns to meet with the writers—is the show's mentally exhausted producer Brad (Denis O'Hare, a sneaky scene-stealer for his lived-in performance), who probably only remains conscious each day thanks to a combination of caffeine and pent-up frustration.

The reason this material works, though, is because Kaling's screenplay doesn't fall into any easy trap for giving this story the form of a plot. The story may seem like a dream come true for Molly, but there's hard work required for her succeed. There's also never a sense that she's one great joke or one solid segment idea away from proving herself, because such an enterprise requires dozens of decent jokes every day just to get by. Molly seems to be on track to have something of a romance with a co-worker, but that subplot basically ends with "something," before anything like romance comes into the picture.

It feels more like being a fly on the wall in the show's offices, communal areas, and set, which the writers, save for head monologue scribe Tom (Reid Scott), are barred from visiting. If there is a plot, it's of the ticking-clock variety, in that the network's president (played by Amy Ryan) has decided that Katherine will be replaced within the year. That gets the host to become more involved in the writing process, to accept that new ideas might be necessary, and to see Molly as the person who might be able to get the show out of its stagnation—however begrudgingly.

If any of the behind-the-scenes section of the movie fails, it's in the show itself, which never seems to improve (The jokes and sketches become more political, but the political humor involving the making of the show is funnier and better-earned). That's irrelevant, perhaps, because the show itself isn't the point. It's also immaterial because, while Kaling avoids the pitfalls of a simple plot for a while, the third act shifts drastically from, in the first act, Molly and from, in the second act, the growing bond between the new writer and the host to exclusively becoming Katherine's story.

Thompson is great here as a character whose rough edges—her quickness to anger, her ease in firing people, her general disinterest in anyone who isn't her (She doesn't even know that one of her favorite writers died many years ago)—are never smoothed out to make her easily likeable. We do end up liking her, though, because we can sense the struggles she has endured in her time as the first and only host of a late-night talk show.

That, apparently, isn't enough, and the lengthy conclusion of Late Night features a sudden scandal that puts Katherine's life, her career, and her marriage to Walter (John Lithgow) in jeopardy. It's a manipulative fix to the issue of the character's outward lack of compassion, and the move also dismisses Molly as a significant character and, more importantly, the feeling of just spending time in an observantly reproduced world.

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