Review: Late Night

Image courtesy of Amazon Studios.

"Late Night" is a funny and sharp comedy that covers everything from the treatment of women in the workplace and diversity to issues of class, gender and age. It's a charming comedy with a fair amount on its mind that takes a familiar story - essentially that of "The Devil Wears Prada" - and gives it an entertaining upgrade.

In the film, Molly (Mindy Kaling, who also wrote the screenplay) is a young Indian woman with comedic chops whose current audience is the workers at the Pennsylvania chemical plant where she works in quality control. She sees an opening for her dream job - a writing gig for a late night show hosted by an iconic comedienne named Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson), who is the only woman with such a position in the television industry.

However, Katherine has begun to be regarded as a fossil, so her boss (Amy Ryan) has decided to replace her with a sexist frat bro comedian (Ike Barinholtz) whose jokes typically revolve around scat or genitalia. Katherine, who is English to a tee, is noticeably mortified and commands her assistant (Denis O'Hare) to add a woman to her all-male staff of writers, who don't take kindly to Molly's presence.

Molly is shocked when Katherine agrees with her that she's a "diversity hire," but Katherine makes the point that she's also the only one of her kind - a woman in late night talk show TV - and now Molly is the first woman writer on the staff, so she should pave the way and make the best of her newfound power. Molly's male cohorts (Hugh Dancy, Reid Scott, Max Casella, among others) are at first wary of her, noting that she is quick to criticize the show's stale format, but has few solutions. But she eventually captures the respect - if not quite the affection - of Katherine.

One of the most likable aspects of "Late Night" is that, Barinholtz's comedian and his agent notwithstanding, there aren't really any villains here. Katherine's team of male writers are more beneficiaries of a flawed system than jerks who attempt to hold Molly back, while Ryan's boss lady at first comes across as sinister, but we reassess that judgment later in the picture. There's also a touching subplot involving Katherine's ailing husband (John Lithgow), a former musician who has Parkinson's disease, that is effective without dialing up the emotion to a maudlin level.

Thompson is great here as Katherine, a role that proves the actress is an able comedienne, while Kaling is also very good. The focus on the film's relationships is especially smart - including that between Katherine and her husband, Katherine and Molly, Molly and a love interest (Dancy) that goes nowhere and Molly and Tom (Scott), the lead writer who at first dislikes his female counterpart, but realizes that they work better as a team than as adversaries.

"Late Night" doesn't do anything that particularly surprises you - the story goes pretty much exactly where you expect it to - but it goes about it in a witty, thoughtful and buoyant manner.