Review: A surprisingly excellent movie, that is both quite funny and very heartfelt.
I have to admit I have never given much thought to late night comedy talk shows like the one this film is about. This is because I have never really sat down and watched one. With me being a movie buff and a music buff, if I am going to stay up late, or simply can't sleep, I'm more likely to be watching an old movie or listening to music than flipping through channels looking for a show to watch. Despite this though writer/star Mindy's enthusiasm for these type of shows was something I found hard to resist. I started to appreciate a type of entertainment, that I am barely familiar with. This script looks on this type of show as an artform that can truly have something important to say (by that I don't just mean politics, there is a fantastic scene that shows how the show actually helped a character handle her anxiety) while still being fun mainstream entertainment. Though this movie may not shy away from the tougher parts of working on a show like this and the darker side of show business, the film never becomes cynical or jaded. This is a movie with a truly good heart that manages to be optimistic and warm without looking at the world through rose colored glasses.
This is truly a character driven comedy and luckily for us, our two main characters are extremely likable. Molly is a perfectly charming person. She is sweet, loveable, relatable and everything we could want from a protagonist. She is very easy to root for and in a scene where she is crying, you will want to hug her. Katherine is a more complex character. She is completely fascinating. She could have easily been just a tough mean spirited caricature. However it ends up as tough as she is on others, she is even tougher on herself. She is completely scary to everyone around her and can easily be viewed as a tyrant for firing so many people because she is having a bit of a tantrum. However beneath her rough exterior, there is a good heart hidden underneath there. How we are supposed to view her with these contradictory traits is completely up to us. That is something that is hard not to appreciate.
As someone not as familiar with late night comedy talk shows as well as most, this movie gives me a very mixed view of the type of humor these shows have. While when off the TV stage, this movie is consistently funny, the humor from Kathrine's show ranges from hilarious to extremely unfunny.
The film does unfortunately have one scene that feels completely forced (involving an interview with a YouTube star).
Overall this is an excellent film that perfectly mixes the humor and the sentimentality, while providing us with very well defined and relatable characters.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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