The material just isn’t there. That’s ironic, because Late Night is largely about the world of comedy writing. Mindy Kaling wrote the script and co-stars as Molly Patel, a quality-control manager at a chemical plant obsessed with late-night talk-show stalwart Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson). Through painfully convoluted developments, Molly ends up as a desperate hire to Newbury’s writer’s room, in a last-bid effort to shake things up when the show is threatened with cancellation. Kaling was a precise performer on television’s “The Office,” but here she doesn’t have a strong fix on her character; depending on the scene, Molly is either a naive bumbler, a savvy networker, or an incisive comic. The real problem, however, is that neither Molly, nor Newbury, nor anyone on her staff is very funny. There’s a telling moment where Newbury impulsively takes the mic at a standup benefit with some new material about Twitter, but the bit bombs. She gathers herself and comes up with a new routine on the spot about aging in show business; it kills, the crowd goes nuts, but the lines are only half a degree funnier than the Twitter stuff. Indeed, all the jokes involving potentially potent topics—like ageism, sexism, and racism—feel dated and fairly toothless. Ultimately, Late Night could have used a rewrite or two of its own. (It has the right star; Thompson is a force, desperate for a stronger screenplay.) Directed by Nisha Ganatra, who previously worked with Kaling on “The Mindy Project.”
