更新时间:2020-02-21
他他 • 深夜秀:[Film Review] Late Night (2019) 6.4/10
Acerbic and implacably female-centered, LATE NIGHT is stemmed from American writer/comedienne Mindy Kaling’s self-referential script, and is directed by female director Nisha Ganatra of the same Indian lineage like its soft-centered scenarist.
Emma Thompson, unabashedly white, old but soigné, plays the eminent evening talk show host Katherine Newbury, with a couple dozens of Emmies under her belt, she has been rested on her laurels, maybe for too long, when she is given the fair warning by the network president Caroline (Ryan) that this season might be her last if the show’s declining rating doesn’t rally, and almost at the same time, she casually makes a “diversity hire” after the criticism of her all-white-male writer staff, and the lucky gal is the Indian-American Molly Patel (played by Kaling herself), a chemistry plant worker who has no experience in sketch comedy but an aspiring heart and a way-too-nice personality.
It is somehow disheartening to admit that Molly’s characterization fails to step outside the hokum parameters of the “rookie in a competitive workplace” mode, given someone hailed from an ethnic minority finally takes a central spot here, Molly is unremarkably designed as a meeker, broader version of Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs in David Frankel’s THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (2006), leaving her own merits (gumption, talent and sense of humor) ungrounded in the feel-good superficialities, thence, ceding the limelight to a virtuosic Thompson, having a whale of time in inhabiting a perfectionist, intelligent, seasoned woman who is also too brittle and callous by half, not dissimilar to Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly, she flouts the pat dichotomy between a monster and a saint, and learns that self-parody is quite a panacea to her self-imposed high-standard vocation.
Katherine is not a woman seeking for our compassion, she has been fed on her celebrity status and is incapable of suffering fools gladly, her cruelty and bitterness is not intentional but congenital, why, a successful woman like her, cannot radiate warmth and wisdom at the same time? Kaling’s screenplay is at its most trenchant when obliquely imputing the causation to the sexism environs that can be pernicious even to a woman at the top of her game.
Often too SNL-esque to retain the story’s own distinction and acuity, the movie, at the very least, makes it up for its good intention and a sensible message that fine-tunes the gender/race politics in the workplace, plus, for fans of Ms. Thompson, LATE NIGHT is as good as a feast to relish.
referential entries: David Frankel’s THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (2006, 7.9/10); John Lee Hancock’s SAVING MR. BANKS (2013, 7.7/10).
深夜秀Late Night(2019)
又名：夜深时
上映日期：2019-01-25(圣丹斯电影节) / 2019-06-07(美国)片长：102分钟
主演：艾玛·汤普森 Emma Thompson/敏迪·卡灵 Mindy Kaling/约翰·利思戈 John Lithgow/休·丹西 Hugh Dancy/伊克·巴里霍尔兹 Ike Barinholtz/梅歌林·艾奇坤沃克 Megalyn Echikunwoke/艾米·莱安 Amy Ryan/马克斯·凯塞拉 Max Casella/保罗·沃尔特·豪泽 Paul Walter Hauser/瑞德·斯科特 Reid Scott/丹尼斯·欧哈拉 Denis O'Hare/费斯·洛根 Faith Logan/约翰·厄尔利 John Early/桃乐丝·麦卡锡 Doris McCarthy/卢克·斯拉特里 Luke Slattery/格里高利·迈克尔 Gregory Mikell/Rupak Ginn
导演：尼萨·加纳特 Nisha Ganatra编剧：敏迪·卡灵 Mindy Kaling
