Tag: talk show

LATE NIGHT – Review

Emma Thompson (foreground) and Mindy Kaling (far right) star in LATE NIGHT. Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios.

Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling star in a sort of buddy comedy about a much-lauded but out-of-touch late-night talk show host who hires a young South Asian-American chemist-turned-comedy writer to turn around her sagging ratings, in director Nisha Ganatra’s LATE NIGHT. Yeah, it’s silly but it is surprisingly fun as Thompson and Kaling explore topics ranging from toxic workplaces, sexism, diversity, cut-throat television competition to what makes comedy work, all with dash of inspiration and warmth

The film opens with Thompson’s Katherine Newbury accepting yet another award for her long-career as the first woman to host a late night talk show. Katherine’s show features guests such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and an opening monologue but over the years she has fallen into routine and complacency. With all her awards, the last thing she expects is for the network’s new female CEO to tell her she is being replaced.

Shocked into action, Katherine turns to her writing staff and suddenly notices it is all men. In an effort to add a woman’s voice, she hires the first one through the door – Molly (Kaling), a South Asian-American chemist trying to break into comedy writing.

As soon as newbie Molly shows up in the all-male, all-white writers room, they assume she’s there to fetch coffee. “I wish I was a woman of color so I could get hired with zero qualification,” whines one of the writers, in a fit of white male privilege. But while Molly may have little experience, she brings a ton of brains and fresh ideas to the stale writers’ room.

Mindy Kaling really makes this work. Of course, Kaling certainly knows something about being a woman writer in the male-dominated comedy field, as well as working in television. She works in bits about clueless bosses, slams at diversity hires, and a host of other timely topics. Not every bit works but there are enough of them to garner laughs of enough to keep the movie bouncing along.

While Kaling does her fish-out-of-water comedy, Thompson mines the film’s more dramatic side. Thompson’s character is a comedian who seems to have lost her sense of humor. As charming as she seems in public, she is pretty callous to her staff. She is a self-absorbed boss from hell dressed in designer clothes (a little echo from “The Devil Wears Prada”) but Thompson makes her more than that. Thompson does sport some flashy fashions and footwear as she terrorizes her staff. After years of ignoring her writers, she shows up at their meeting demanding material that is timely and funny. Not wanting to bother to learning their names, she gives them numbers instead.

Meanwhile Thompson explores other topics with her character, an ambitious driven woman who forgo having a family for her career. She lives only for her career – and for her husband Walter (John Lithgow), a respected academic now in poor health. The film explores the complications in her long marriage, with warm, well-drawn performances from both Lithgow and Thompson.

Kaling’s character faces a daunting workplace where women are not welcome – much less one of color. She is not only expected to get the coffee but finds the all-male writing team even use the women’s bathroom. She doesn’t even get a chair at the writer’s table and has only a corner of a desk. Still, she gets organized and gets to work on jokes for the monologue

There is potential for some pointed political humor here but Kaling takes a softer approach, making some points but backing off from anything truly biting. Kaling makes up for that with warmth and the kind of bonding scenes between her and Thompson, in a female version of a bromance (sis-mance? womance?). They start out not liking but needing each other, and winding up more like mentor-protege, even friends.

Kaling and Thompson are good in their scenes together, although their characters are often on dual tracks. The more affecting scenes are between Thompson and Lithgow as the long-married couple, working through a rough patch. Kaling bounces her comedy off the fellow writers, landing some good barbs.

LATE NIGHT’s two-track approach – comedic and dramatic – to exploring the challenges women face in the workplace doesn’t always work but it works often enough to make the film funny and thought-provoking most of the time. Which is pretty good.

LATE NIGHT opens Friday, June 14 at the Hi-Pointe Theater, Plaza Frontenac Cinema, and other area theaters.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

ASK DR. RUTH – Review

Everyone knows Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the on-air sex therapist who speaks so frankly, but how much do you know about the personal story of this diminutive Jewish grandma who has been a darling of talk shows for decades, using her expertise as a PhD sex therapist to offer non-judgmental advice on sexual matters? Likely, not much. ASK DR. RUTH goes a way to correcting that. In the process, we again fall under the spell of this personable, lively, intelligent woman who has led an unusual life and overcome so many hardships.

Who knew Dr. Ruth, who seems so much fun, survived the Holocaust in a Swiss orphanage where as a ten-year-old she was put to work cleaning and caring for the younger children? Or that she was married several times? Or that she was an avid skier? These are among the surprises uncovered in this delightful documentary.

Director Ryan White’s illuminating, entertaining biographical film first introduces us to Dr. Ruth Westheimer in the tiny New York apartment where the nearly 90-year-old still lives, despite her financial success, before the documentary delves into her backstory. Dr. Ruth is an unlikely success story: a Holocaust survivor with a thick German accent, a prim-and-proper-looking tiny woman with a PhD in psychology who spoke on-air with bracing frankness about sex, just as America was entering the sexual revolution of the ’60s. The combination of her disarming appearance, her impeccable credentials and her plain speaking about sex made her a media celebrity and a popular favorite.

Turns out, Dr. Ruth has an unlikely personal story as well. Born in Germany near Frankfort, Karola Ruth Siegel was the beloved only child of Orthodox Jewish parents who doted on her. After the Nazis came to power, they sent her at age 10 to Switzerland by train, as part of a “kindertransport” with other Jewish children. Landing in a Swiss orphanage, the Jewish children were not welcomed and hardly had a comfortable life. The older Jewish children, including the ten-year-old, were required to work, which she did until the war ended when she was 17. With her parents vanished, she emigrated to Israel (then Palestine) where she switched her middle and first names to become Ruth K. Siegel.

The German-born, 4-foot-7 dynamo has lived in Switzerland, on a kibbutz in Israel, in Paris and in New York. After WWII interrupted her education, she went on to attend the Sorbonne and later earn a PhD from Columbia University, married three times, raised two children, and worked at Planned Parenthood. She started her career as on-air sex therapist on a late-night community radio show, Sexually Speaking. She met her last husband, the love of her life, engineer Fred Westheimer, on the ski slopes. And those are only a few of the sometimes surprising details uncovered in ASK DR. RUTH.

Director Ryan White illustrates the early phase of Dr. Ruth’s life with animated drawings based on photos of her as a girl, a cute pixie with bright eyes and a sweet smile. The animated sequences are appealing and narrated in part by excerpts from her diaries. Later phases of her life and career are illustrated with archival photos and video. Segments on her past are interspersed with footage of the present-day nonagenarian, surprisingly fit, in New York and on returns to Switzerland and Israel. The documentary also includes interviews with her children and grandchildren, old friends and colleagues, as well as a host of videos of Dr. Ruth at various events.

The documentary impresses us with Dr. Ruth’s personal story, and Dr. Ruth herself wins our affection with her energetic persona, but the film also notes that not every therapist is a fan of her on-air advice. Several note that advice based on shallow knowledge of a person gained from a call-in show can be dangerous for someone with real problems, a criticism that can be applied to all talk show therapists. However, Dr. Ruth did paved the way for the phenomenon, as she was followed by Dr. Phil and other therapists offering advice on talk shows, and she also set the trend of Dr. First Name, when early callers to her radio show struggled with pronouncing her last name.

While we learn a great deal we did not know about her, Dr. Ruth herself cautions us that she still keeps parts of her life private, and there are sides her we will never learn about, a refreshing kind of honesty in itself. Apart from a few moments of impatience, she is unfailingly good-humored, even when the documentary covers more difficult moments of her life. She keeps darker feelings under wraps, even when she visits the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, to read in their archives about the fate of her parents.

ASK DR. RUTH is an illuminating experience, a charmer of a film as lively and entertaining as its subject, and just as surprising. ASK DR. RUTH opens Friday, May 3, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars