“Watching Emma Thompson (The Children Act) and Mindy Kaling mix it up in Late Night, a wickedly pointed workplace satire, will make you think you’ve died and gone to hilarity heaven.
Thompson plays Katherine Newbury, a late-night talk show host who, in an attempt to stop her slide in the ratings, hires Molly Patel (Kaling), the first female to penetrate Katherine’s writing staff of white dudes.
Molly is an Indian-American chemical-plant efficiency expert with no writing experience. What she does have, as a fan of the show, is the idea that Katherine can reignite her career simply by being herself, talking to her audience honestly about things like age, menopause, and the fear of being replaced.
Out of that simple premise, director Nisha Ganatra, Kaling (who wrote the script, with all its subversive wit) and the glorious Thompson (time for another Oscar?) spin comic gold.” (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone)
“Late Night smartly sends up not just the cloistered world of late night television, but a current cultural climate struggling to evolve in a changing world.” (Kate Erbland, IndieWire)
“Thompson delivers a memorable performance as the abrasive ‘cold witch,’ as someone describes her, perhaps even outdoing Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wars Prada as a delightfully wicked woman of power.” (Anthony Kaufman, Screen International)
“The combination of Thompson’s sharp delivery and Kaling’s commercially friendly script make the film’s charms hard to resist.” (Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist)