FilmSnobReviews

Title: Late Night
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Nisha Ganatra
Starring: Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, John Lithgow
Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins

What It Is: For the last several decades’ talk show host Katherine Newbury (Thompson) has held it down at the helm of the very long-running show. When she gets an opening on her writing team she is stunned at the lack of diversity in it. It’s literally all white cis males. When she finds this out she demands they hire a woman. In comes former factory Worker Molly Patel (Kaling) a WOC. Initially, she was hired because she fit the bill that Katherine had asked for. But what started as a diversity hire may turn into something more.

What We Think: So this is one we missed at Sundance. All of it’s showing were completely packed apparently. I can kind of see why. This is sort of a crowdpleaser. Emma Thompson is a tour de force here. She grabs every scene she’s in and doesn’t let go. With that said it was hard to like her for some of it. That did work when it came to gaining sympathy for Kaling’s Molly. I liked the script and it all felt very “in the real world” that works for something like this. It’s no surprise Amazon picked this up.

Our Grade: B-, I really enjoyed this. Sure it wears it’s messages on its sleeve a bit too much. Part of that makes the film a bit predictable. If you buy in though there’s a funny and touching film to be had here. This is a seriously easy film to catch as it’s on Amazon Prime. I recommend you check this out. I would like to shoutout Mindy Kaling for her wonderful writing on this. She does an amazing job of crafting these characters. Just make sure to see it for yourself.