Intermittent amusement in ‘Late Night’

Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson team in a comedy about women in the world of late-night network TV.

In the new comedy Late Night, Emma Thompson portrays Katherine Newbury, the only woman host of a long-running late-night show that airs on network TV. Icy of temperament and cruel to her staff, Katherine is supposed to be a stand-up comic with a cutting delivery. Jokes aside, she tends to prefer serious guests to refugees from reality TV.

Katherine presides over a stable of male writers whom she believes may be letting her down. Her once-popular show is on its way to becoming an afterthought. The station's new head (Amy Ryan) already has made arrangements to replace Katherine with a comic (Ike Barinholtz) who happily wallows in the sort of crude material Katherine abhors.

What to do? The screenplay by Mindy Kaling (of TV's The Office and The Mindy Project) brings fresh blood to the rescue. Kaling portrays Molly Patel, a woman who works in a chemical plant but secretly dreams of becoming a comedy writer.

As part of a desperate attempt to diversify her staff, Katherine insists on hiring a female. Molly fills the bill and, even better, qualifies as a low-expectation hire. Molly's male counterparts believe the inexperienced wannabe will vanish quickly.

Of course, Molly won't be so easily dispatched. Turns out she has fresh ideas and isn't afraid to talk about them at writers' meetings over which Katherine presides without calling any of the contributors by name. She assigns them numbers.

Two strains of assertion drive the story. Can the old dog (Katherine) learn a few new tricks and can the newbie (Molly) become a legitimate presence in helping to engineer the transformation?

Underlying both of these questions is another imperative, the one that says, it's best to be yourself and allow the chips to fall where they may.

Katherine, who's supposed to be too smart for an era of dumbed-down TV, also qualifies as too unpleasant to win many off-camera fans. Her devoted and nearly invisible husband (John Lithgow) remains a loyal supporter. Thompson's performance doesn’t skimp on scorn for Katherine’s supposed inferiors while also suggesting that she knows her fastball has lost some of its zing.

Both likable and amusing, Kaling gives a performance that helps soften Katherine's sharp edges.

Among the writers, Reid Scott (Veep), Max Casella (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and Hugh Dancy (of TV's Hannibal) make some impact. Dennis O'Hare portrays the show's besieged producer, a fellow with the unenviable job of soothing Katherine's ego and keeping the staff from withering under the glare of her imperious gaze.

All of this might have worked well enough save for a couple of problems -- not the least of which is that Thompson, a brilliant comic actress, never seems like someone who'd find her place on a stand-up stage. It's a crucial distinction: Comic acting and stand-up don't draw on the same skills.

Laughs are a matter of taste, I suppose. For me, Late Night provided intermittent amusement until it reaches its predictably affirming conclusion. So, another movie in which promise exceeds fulfillment? For me, yes.

'Wrinkle' neither folds nor soars

Visually abundant adaptation of popular novel falls short on wonder..

A New York Times article about the 90th edition of the Academy Awards referred to director Ava DuVernay (13th, Selma) as “one of Hollywood’s most aggressive advocates for diversity.” It only takes a few minutes of the big-screen adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time to know that DuVernay has no qualms about putting her convictions on screen.

A somewhat scattered, effects-laden adaptation of a popular novel by Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time stands as both an adventure fantasy and an overdue helping of diverse casting. Its story sends the child of an interracial couple into alternate universes along with her adopted brother and a white teenage boy.

That’s not to say that A Wrinkle in Time takes diversity as its theme. Like many of the Disney movies that precede it, Wrinkle is an ode to the importance of family, as well as a recasting of a typical hero’s journey.

The movie’s main character — a brainy 13-year-old named Meg (Storm Reid) — faces many tests as she tries to establish herself as a warrior for the light; i.e., all that is good in the universe.

DuVernay has said that her movie primarily aims at 12-year-olds and those able to get into a 12-year-old state of mind. As someone for whom 12 barely exists as a memory, I found the movie to be an elaborate helping of children’s theater that proved wanting at the point when it's supposed to reach its emotional crescendo and a little too vague about what constitutes evil in the movie’s visually abundant universe.

I also found the cosmology depicted in A Wrinkle in Time a bit confusing but that may not matter to young audiences willing to go with flow in order to enjoy the movie's various odd sights: a beach where a character who embodies evil (Michael Pena) turns up or a strange cave-like place that's home to Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis), a character whose name explains his outlook.

Though it brims with varied settings and costumes, the core of A Wrinkle in Time hinges on a simplistic binary battle between the light and the dark, evil being represented by a spidery looking creation that resembles an ink blot.

Three other-worldly beings serve as guides for young Meg’s journey, which involves something called a “tesseract.” As best as I could discern — and with help from Wikipedia — the tesseract is a phenomenon that creates folds in the fabric of space and time, allowing Meg and her companions to travel through the fifth dimension.

These guides are women with (what else?) special powers. Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) can turn herself into what looks like a giant green leaf that carries the movie’s adventurers like a magic carpet. Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) is a walking Bartlett’s book of quotations; she dispenses the wisdom of others. Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) seems to materialize out of nothing.

When we first meet Mrs. Which, she’s clad in silver and as tall as one of those balloons in a holiday parade, looming large over everyone else, a visual choice that mirrors Winfrey’s status in the real-life world of media.

Meg’s interplanetary journey is motivated by a devastating loss. Her father (Chris Pine) has been missing for four years as the result of a quest to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Meg was left to make do with her mom (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe).

Meg journeys into other worlds to locate her scientist father and bring him home because, as we long ago learned from the The Wizard of Oz, no matter how intoxicating alternate realities can be, there’s no place like home.

Levi Miller portrays Calvin O’Keefe, a popular teenager who joins outcast Meg on her trippy pursuits, but his character doesn't seem to have much of a role beyond adding someone with whom younger boys may identify.

First seen in Twelve Years A Slave, Reid provides the movie with a solid center. Initially annoying, McCabe’s Charles Wallace grew on me, particularly when his body was taken over by the IT, a disembodied evil that turns him from a brainiac into a painiac.

The movie’s production team does a good job creating wavy wrinkles in time as Meg travels in the fifth dimension, and the movie certainly doesn't lack for other forms of visual invention. My favorite: a rigidly conformist suburban community where every kid stands in a driveway bouncing a beach ball in unison, a twisted idea of playtime.

I suppose the best fantasies create a sense of wonder that Wrinkle in Time can't quite achieve. It's probably not the keenest of critical insights or the heartiest of endorsements, but after a preview screening and a little reflection, I'd say the movie qualifies as "OK." I'd be lying if I didn't say I was hoping for more.

A mind can be a minefield, too

Pixar's Inside Out offers a creative look at the way emotions operate in the mind of an 11-year-old girl.

It's hardly surprising that Pixar, the pioneering studio that helped make computer animation a part of our cultural life, has produced an extremely creative movie. Sometimes, it's good that our expectations are met, and this time, Pixar hasn't let us down.

A long way from disappointments such as Cars 2, (2011), Pixar's Inside Out tells a story based on the idea that we all have a variety of voices rattling around our heads, the constant conversation that represents one of the last bastions of privacy.

In Inside Out, director Pete Docter (Up) takes us inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl, showing us how she reacts to a major and very stressful development in her life.

The story revolves around a big adjustment Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) must make. In search of a business opportunity, Riley's parents (Diane Lane and Kyle McLachlan) move from what Riley sees as an idyllic Minnesota town to San Francisco.

Forced to adapt to a new school, a new urban environment and a house that's in need of substantial work, Riley's head goes into spin cycle.

That's hardly a novel idea, but what's unusual about Inside Out is the imaginative way that Docter brings Riley's conflicts to life. He creates characters that represent Riley's major emotions, and allows one or the other of them to take over her mind as circumstances change.

These "inner" characters have self-explanatory names: Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith).

You get the idea: The story takes place both inside and outside Riley's head. We see how Riley's emotions react to shifting circumstances. Should we be surprised that Anger raises its voice?

At one point Joy and Sadness leave the control room (the place from which all the emotions are governed) and have adventures inside Riley's mind, encountering great banks of long-term memory archives.

When Joy and Sadness leave the control room, Anger, Fear and Disgust take over. Not a happy occurrence.

Docter's animated feature has a welcome undertone of psychological realism: Sadness can interrupt Joy, and the movie smartly riffs on the way memory works.

At one point, the story dredges up a memory of a nearly forgotten imaginary friend of Riley's named Bing-Bong (Richard Kind). Maybe she forgot about him when she became involved in hockey, her favorite sport.

Visually, Pixar's computer geniuses keep pace with the story. There's plenty to keep the eye busy, but the real message here has a salutary grace.

In order to function, Riley doesn't need to abandon Anger, Fear and Disgust; she must learn to find the harmony that makes room for all her emotions while preserving her core values.

That may sound a bit pat, but -- as we all know -- it can be easier to balance a check book than to balance our emotions.

Don't believe me? Just ask Anger and Disgust.