Late Night

Back in the 2000s, Mindy Kaling found herself on the writing staff of the TV show, The Office, where she was a diversity hire.  This experience obviously inspired Late Night (which she wrote, co-produced and stars in), a genial and formulaic, but smart, comedy where she plays a woman who finds herself a diversity hire on the writing staff of a talk show that once was at the top of the late night wars, but has since fallen into obscurity.

This is a sweet and funny film that wants to show a woman making it in a mostly male-dominated world, but is also conventional enough to not shake things up too much.  Director Nisha Ganatra wisely uses Kaling's unique and likable gifts as a comedic actress to great effect, giving her a winning lead role.  The movie puts Kaling's sunny humor and personality up against Emma Thompson, as her boss, who is skilled with the withering insult or comment.  Thompson might be channeling a little bit of Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada here, but she also puts a unique spin, and makes us laugh just as much, even if she is sometimes being a terrible person.  It's the teaming of these two actresses, and their unique comic sensibilities, that makes the film stand out, even if what happens within it is never all that surprising.

The plot is centered on the behind the scenes turmoil that happens around "Tonight with Katherine Newbury", which has been hosted by Katherine (Thompson) for nearly 30 years.  She has numerous Emmy Awards lining her walls, but in recent years, the show has taken a dip in quality.  She hasn't been relevant in over 10 years, and she refuses to update the format on her show.  She's still respected in the industry, but we get the sense it's because of what she's done in the past, rather than anything recent.  In the writers' room on her show, she refuses to learn their names, referring to them instead by an assigned number.  When it's brought to her attention that all of her writers are men, she decides to hire a woman in order to quiet the critics.

Enter Molly (Kaling), who has worked at a chemical plant most of her adult life, and whose main experience with comedy has been entertaining her co-workers, and occasionally doing some amateur stand up for charity causes.  Regardless, she is hired as a writer out of desperation as a diversity hire.  Naturally, she does not fit in with her new environment.  She is outspoken and critical of the show, and the downward spiral it's been facing for about a decade now, which obviously does not win her any favors with Katherine.  As for the other writers, they don't take her seriously at first, and one even mistakes her for a production assistant when he first lays eyes on her, giving her his lunch order.  And yet, Molly soon finds her place in the writers' room, offering her suggestions for the opening monologue, and also trying to get Katherine to add some more personal subject matters into her humor, such as politics and elements from her own life.

Late Night honestly could have used a few more surprises up its narrative sleeve, but what we're given is likable, because both Kaling and Thompson work so well together in the scenes that they share.  It's great how the movie has these two characters working or bouncing one-liners off of each other, even if they have nothing in common.  These two characters sometimes find themselves on the same team, but more often find themselves pitted against each other.  Katherine is a traditionalist, and some of the ideas that Molly pitches for her show genuinely terrify her.  And yet, we can always sense that begrudging respect that stays strong, and helps build an effective relationship that is built on a form of respect.  Molly becomes determined to make Katherine realize that updating the show is not the end of her career, while Katherine begins to slowly understand where Molly is coming from with her ideas.  It's an effective relationship that starts because they're both women working in a male-dominated field, but it grows bigger than that.

There are some strong subplots here as well, my favorite involving Katherine's relationship with her husband (John Lithgow), a brilliant musician who is suffering from Parkinson's.  Their relationship is one that I sort of wish I could see a movie about.  There is obvious love between them, but also a lot of pain.  She is his second wife, and he left a lot behind in order to have her.  Now that he may be fighting a losing battle with his disease, he is reflecting on his life a lot.  It all builds up to a third act reveal that is genuinely touching when both Lithgow and Thompson sit down and talk about where their relationship truly is.  These scenes have a certain tenderness to them that I kind of wish the more sitcom-style "behind the scenes" moments had.  It makes you wish there was a way they could expand upon these characters, and we could see them appear in their own story somehow.

Still, Date Night manages to stand out as it is, because there is an intelligence to its humor, and Kaling obviously drew upon a lot of personal experience in the industry while writing her script.  It might be familiar, but it holds some true laughs, some memorable characters, and great performances all around.  I kind of wish it delved a little bit deeper into its subject matter, but what we did get is very good.

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