SEX SCANDAL MAKES HOLLYWOOD

THERON TRANSFORMS INTO ON-AIR PERSONALITY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The stars line up for the on air personalities at Fox News.

Bombshell (2019) starring Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, John Lithgow and Margot Robbie, and a cast of several talented supporting actors, chronicles the sex scandal that brought down a major American media corporation.

Director Jay Roach creates a feature film in a docudrama format about the biopic characters at Fox News.

Roach directed Trumbo (2015) to critical acclaim. The film, starring Bryan Cranston, depicted the Hollywood Red Scare during the McCarthy Era when anyone suspected of associations with the Communist Party was put out of work. Dalton Trumbo was supported by the film community with contracts to ghost write film scripts.

Roach does well to cast leading actors together and then fills in the background with talented supporting characters.

The narrative has a good pace with several scenes being driven by the score before the narrative grinds to a halt. The sudden silence creates suspense in sync with the action occurring during the scene.

John Lithgow plays Fox Chief Executive Officer Roger Ailes. Lithgow does a good job transforming into the overweight media baron. Lithgow committed a previous transformation as British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the Netflix Series, The Crown ((2016-2019).

Lithgow plays Ailes as a sexual predator in deep denial.

Theron, Kidman and Robbie steal the show, though. Theron has the lead role as news anchor Megyn Kelly. Theron is cast well as Kelly, changing her voice and picking up the walk of a national media personality in high heels. The make-up department adds some final touches.

Kidman is fitted with a prosthetic dimpled chin to become morning show host Gretchen Carlson. The prosthetic chin is a slight exaggeration, suggesting that the film might be part satire.

Roach also begins the film with a voice over by Theron to explain to the audience what has been going on. A voice over is also used in early scenes to reveal what the characters are thinking, but not saying. The suggestions of a satire gradually disappears into more of a docudrama, with some elements of humor left to keep the film from becoming too heavy.

The make-up department also helps supporting actors transform into biopic characters, such as Malcolm McDowell into Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, Richard Kind as lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Kevin Dorff as show host Bill O’Reilly, and Tony Plana as TV personality Geraldo Rivera.

The script is a candid look at the pressing issues of sexual harassment in the workplace. Roach gives the topic and news events the journalistic treatment with fair and balanced coverage of both sides of the controversial issue.

Ailes is permitted to give his side of the story during the film, but the end result supports his firing by Fox owner Rupert Murdoch.

Roach leads with the second narrative about Kelly’s on air battle with United States presidential hopeful Donald Trump. The Trump narrative gradually becomes the backstory that continues to compete with the Ailes narrative.

Although both narratives deal with the inappropriate treatment of women by the conservative establishment, the Trump narrative is less important and takes too much focus off the Ailes sexual harassment claims.

The touch of satire also takes the edge of the importance of the topic, although Roach does leave in very powerful scenes about sexual harassment at Fox. 

The light hearted treatment of some scenes does make the heavy scenes all the more suspenseful and disturbing. You could hear a pin drop in the theatre during some scenes, the movie moment was so suspenseful and disturbing.

The film suffers from a bit of pastiche, incorporating elements of previous years’ best feature films, such as the newsroom suspense from Steven Spielberg’s The Post (2017) and the satire from Adam McKay’s Vice (2018).

And the cinematography is not quite docudrama and not quite documentary.

Roach does create some interesting scenes with camera shots through glass walls, but the actors really do make the movie worthwhile.

Theron shows how Kelly had been assimilated into the corporate culture, but she gradually awakens to the disturbing truth of the sexual harassment.

Robbie plays a composite sketch of an associate producer named Kayla Pospisil. Pospisil kind of stumbles into Ailes’ sex trap on the second floor of the newsroom. Robbie shows how the associate producer wants to work her way into a promotion by meeting Ailes, but she does not quite expect just what meeting Ailes means to her personal dignity.

Bombshell is a better than good movie, but Roach leaves lots of room for other films on the topic.