Mindy Kaling’s new ‘Late Night’ comedy sneaks up on you
Mindy’s new project is her best so far.
That’s Mindy Kaling, the actress known for her work on “The Office,” “Oceans 8” and “The Mindy Project.” Her first feature film as both a writer and lead actress, “Late Night,” joins the ranks of fictional depictions of network TV productions — “The Larry Sanders Show,” “30 Rock,” “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” — but Kaling shrewdly puts that old formula through a shredder.
This time, the chat show host is not only a longstanding TV vet, but a woman: Katherine Newbury, played by an acidic Emma Thompson.
Newbury bears no resemblance to any real-life major woman host, such as Joan Rivers or Chelsea Handler, but is a uniquely prickly creation. The stiff Brit is obsessed with hifalutin content on her decades-old show called “Tonight,” preferring to have authors sit on her couch over some ditzy YouTuber. She won’t do sex or political jokes and abhors social media. Suffice it to say, 2019 is not her year.
When one of Katherine’s colleagues tells her, “You hate women,” she’s determined to prove him wrong. Her solution: Hire a woman to join her all-male writing staff. “Find me one that’s worth keeping,” she barks. “Would a gay guy work?” her co-worker, played by Denis O’Hare, replies.
That “diversity hire” turns out to be Molly (Kaling), an Indian-American who has no TV experience and whose last gig was at a chemical plant. She arrives to a writers room filled with dudes. “It can be a very masculine environment,” O’Hare’s character warns her. Molly shoots back: “Oh, well, I saw most of the writers. I’m not worried about masculinity.”
Initially dismissed, Molly becomes a vital member of the “Tonight” team when Katherine discovers she’s going to be replaced as host with a younger, Tucker Max-esque gross-out comic. Molly’s ingenuity could save the show.
Kaling’s script addresses issues such as sexism in the #MeToo era, ageism and racial prejudice in her disarmingly light and sneaky way.
Kaling and Thompson, for the most part, embody the personas you know and love them for. Kaling is adorably bumbling, but smart. And Thompson, at this stage in her career, tends to be a cruel boss type. But there is one scene of hers that comes as a shock.
In the middle of the film, Katherine finds herself on the stage of Theatre 80 St. Marks off-Broadway, doing her first standup set in years in front of a young audience that’s more accustomed to alternative comedy and extreme openness than Johnny Carson’s joke book. Crickets. And then, in a lightbulb moment, she starts talking candidly about her struggles at work. And it kills.
On-screen, the set feels like a real standup spot. For Thompson, of “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Sense and Sensibility,” to make us believe that she’s a bona fide New York comic is a feather in her cap.
Click Here: Sports Water Bottles
