Late Night (Nisha Ganatra)

[Ivan Drago]

http://anygoodfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Late-Night-Poster.jpg

IMDB (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6107548/) / Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Night_(film))


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxefiCjQirw

[Ivan Drago]

Crap, can someone add a poll for me?

[Irish]

Forget the poll for a sec, I wanna know what you thought, Ivan!

[Ivan Drago]

I enjoyed it; my review isn't my best effort (I haven't had the best week), but here it is. (http://www.foxforcefivenews.com/late-night-is-a-hilarious-workplace-comedy-with-sharp-social-commentary-review/)

[dreamdead]

A super-mild yay. Thompson is naturally wonderful here, as are Lithgow and Kaling, but I really wish the film explored how Kaling's character builds out jokes and a sense of humor. She's very much positioned as smart, and Kaling rightly has a scene that explains how she got the job interview, but there's very little devoted to how she crafts a humorous situation into a punchline. And while that might not be absolutely necessary, the film treats her love of comedy and studied appreciation with shorthand rather than helping us see why that humor is fundamental to her character (maybe it's the lung cancer father? maybe not?).

It's a winning script that understands Thompson very much, and treats Kaling herself as the young protege, but it also juggles subplots without having enough time to sustain the depth. Both the real and fake love interests are just kinda there, and even with the reversals, there's not enough presently to fully set up how Kaling interacts with them. There's some over-the-shoulder reaction shots that just look clunky (where the off-screen character doesn't realistically seem to be saying what they're saying--something that Mindy Project and Fresh Off the Boat would both slip into at times). It's pleasant enough, and y'know, not a tentpole film that's super-CGI, but I do wish it tried for a bit more.