Bombshell

One problem with movies with tales ripped from the headlines is that often all they offer is the headline. There's no point in sitting through a story that's already played out on TV and the internet, even if the movie deals with urgent issues that haven't gone away since new crises have taken over the spotlight.

Bombshell could capitalize on the #MeToo movement, but its account of how two of Fox News' anchors Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) managed to bring down the network's founder Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) hits the bullet points of the story without revealing or exploring anything that merits a two-hour discussion.

With the Austin Powers movies, director Jay Roach demonstrated a flair for comedy, and he handled drama well with Trumbo. Bombshell, however, plays as if he and screenwriter Charles Randolph (The Big Short) were unable to decide whether they should be funny or serious.

The movie begins with Kelly gleefully ignoring the fourth wall and telling viewers how News Corporation and Fox News are structured. This approach worked in The Big Short because the financial chicanery was so arcane. The comic exposition breaks helped make the unpunished crimes easier to understand. In Bombshell, an org chart for News Corp is still dull and obvious, even with a narrator as engaging as Theron.

Kelly is willing to inform young viewers that Santa Claus is white (how many toddlers are up at 9:00 p.m. or later or even care, as long as they get their toys?). She also easily blends with the monochromatic hairstyles of the rest of the team on the station, so Ailes considers her a valuable employee.

When she starts asking challenging questions to then-Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, both the future president and some of his more devoted supporters get hostile and even dangerous. While saying encouraging things to Kelly's face, Ailes plays up the hostility because it draws eyeballs.

While Kelly is having to take vacations to escape the hate mail and general animosity, former morning co-anchor Carlson is methodically preparing for her eventual firing. If the demotion and termination weren't bad enough, Ailes has consistently harassed her and even said on tape that her job would be more secure if he slept with her.

Carlson's struggle and eventual lawsuit should have been the primary focus of Bombshell. The late Ailes may have understood the impact of television better than anyone else, but Carlson is an honors grad from Stanford and came up with dozens of ingenious tactics to make sure her exit from the network was as painful for him as possible.

It would have been more fun to watch her match wits with a man who made Richard Nixon electable than to hear supporting characters discover it later. Carlson sneaked an iPhone past Ailes' tight security measures (he had a private elevator and exit from his office) and caught him admitting to behavior that had been appallingly common during his leadership. It's more fun to witness a battle of wits than it is to hear about it secondhand.

Carlson's suit also inspired other women Ailes and his cohorts harassed to speak out publicly, so it seems odd that the film focuses on Kelly, whose struggles with Ailes, weren't as intriguing.

Roach has wisely recruited makeup master Kazu Hiro, who turned Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill for The Darkest Hour. In this film, however, Hiro's creations look stagy and almost cartoonish because even minor characters are played by performers wearing tons of prosthetics.

Richard Kind's Rudolph Giuliani appears in only two scenes, but the only thing that seems to happen is that we notice the actor, who looks nothing like the former New York mayor, sure has a lot of makeup on his face.

It's even more distracting with the leads. Theron does look like Kelly, but the makeup hides some of her expressions. Roach might have served his cast better by using Hiro's wizardry more sparingly.

It also doesn't help that when the real characters are little more than Saturday Night Live impersonations that aren't terribly funny, the composites are easy to spot. Margot Robbie's Kayla Pospisil appears as if Randolph had created her by running down a checklist (blonde? evangelical? millennial? closeted lesbian?).

Roach stops the story in the middle with a montage of women coldly recalling Ailes's abuse and criminal behavior. This one sequence has the power the rest of the film lacks because it feels more authentic and personal. Their detached delivery makes the things Ailes did to them seem even more horrific.

MovieStyle on 12/20/2019