Late Night: Pure joy for Emma Thompson worshippers

A new movie released this week features the kind of winning combination that’s going to make you laugh and maybe a little emotional.

Emma Thompson is eminently watchable, always.

But especially when she’s giving someone a stern, proper telling-off. No one can capture mildly amused contempt quite as well as Thompson. Nor can anyone humanise an unlikeable character as well as Thompson.

Late Night is the Venn diagram of both of those things, which is just pure joy for Thompson worshippers.

She plays Katherine Newbury, a legendary comedian and host who’s been at the helm of her late night show for decades.

Haughty and with her ratings in decline, Katherine is still shocked to find out from the new network boss Caroline (Amy Ryan) that she will soon be replaced by a younger man whose sense of humour comes with a hint of misogyny.

Queen

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Katherine would rather have on her show people who write biographies about Lincoln than the latest YouTube starlet — but it’s that high-mindedness which has led to a “10-year slump”.

When a spot opens on her writing staff, her head writer Brad (Denis O’Hare) hires Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling), a young woman of Indian heritage whose comedy experience extends to cracking jokes over the sound system at the chemical plant where she works.

Molly is a “diversity hire”, designed to add a different voice to the boys club writers’ room on Katherine’s show. Molly is enthusiastic and earnest where Katherine is seemingly cold and cynical, and she challenges the world-weary host.

Katherine could’ve easily been a stereotype, but in Thompson’s hands, she is human, with flaws and vulnerabilities, and that’s especially apparent in scenes shared with Katherine’s husband Walter (John Lithgow).

Kaling and Thompson are a winning combination

Thompson’s performance is layered with tenderness, regret and self-consciousness amid the imperious superiority and stubbornness. Kaling wrote the screenplay with Thompson in mind and you can see the character was crafted for exactly her talents.

Starting out in TV more than 15 years ago, Kaling herself was often the only woman or minority in writers’ rooms filled with men, and those experiences inform the authenticity of Molly’s dynamic on screen — though you’d hate to think the male writers on The Office really did do their number twos in the women’s bathroom.

Workplace comedies are often the best frameworks to weave in serious discussions about things like diversity, privilege and office dalliances — our workplaces are the intersectionality of personalities that may not otherwise meet, opening us to new perspectives, and then stealthily packaging that message amid some laughs.

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Alone in a sea of dudes

Late Night, directed by Nisha Ganatra, cleverly explores those ideas even if it is, at times, heavy handed in its approach. But there’s no mistaking its good intentions, and it still manages to keep it light enough so you don’t quite feel like you’re being bludgeoned.

There are commendable supporting performances from Lithgow, O’Hare, Reid Scott, Hugh Dancy and Ike Barinholtz, but this is a movie that belongs to Thompson and Kaling. As a pairing, they’re so winning together, whether they’re on the same side or not.

For that alone, Late Night is worth checking out.

Rating: 3.5/5

Late Night is in cinemas now

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