WOKE
HOT
AMERICAN
SUMMER
The season’s most laugh-out-
loud comedies are also its most
inclusive and socially aware.
Imagine that. By Estelle Tang
indy Kaling’s meta, multilayered Late Night is a
comedy about comedy. In the movie, which she
wrote and coproduced, Kaling stars as Molly
Patel, a chemical-plant employee who lands
her dream job as a writer for Tonight, hosted by Kather-
ine Newbury (a delightfully spiky Emma Thompson).
Late Night is funny. There are jokes. But in a way, it’s
also a horror film. On Molly’s first day, the otherwise
all-white, all-male writing staff assumes she’s a new
assistant. Once her coworkers realize she’s not there
to take their coffee orders, they play a petulant game of
“You can’t sit with us”—literally. She eventually finds a
trash can to plop down on.
Meanwhile, her new boss might have her own stage
and a Miranda Priestly swagger (Katherine doesn’t know
any of her writers’ names, choosing instead to identify
them by number), but we soon find out that her house
is also haunted. Ratings are tanking; the network wants
to replace her with a boorish dude who makes bad poop
jokes; and a past indiscretion threatens her relationship
with the only person she cares about, her kindly, ailing
BOOKSMARTM
CULTURE MOVIES