Stars: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell, Kate McKinnon
Director: Jay Roach
Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Actress-Charlize Theron, Supporting Actress-Margot Robbie, Makeup & Hairstyling*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars
(Real Life Doesn't Need Spoiler Alerts) The film is mostly focused on Megyn Kelly (Theron) during the peak of her fame at Fox News, where she went from being the star of a primetime opinion show to being a mainstream superstar thanks to her professional arguments with Donald Trump (played here by the president himself through archival footage). While Kelly is trying to find ways to balance her conservative boss's (Lithgow as Roger Ailes) beliefs with her increasing disgust at Trump himself, we see two other women who are trying to find their footing at Fox News. We have Gretchen Carlson (Kidman), a former beauty queen who has been demoted to an afternoon talk show slot, and whose more liberal (for Fox News) political beliefs also feel alien to Ailes, whom she accuses of punishing her for not giving in to his advances. Finally we have Kayla (Robbie), an aspiring (fictional) Fox personality (who unlike Megyn & Gretchen genuinely believes in the conservative movement, and not just playing a part) who works first for Gretchen and then Bill O'Reilly, but in a rare opportunity finds a way to meet Roger, and in the process he starts sexually harassing her and forcing her to perform oral sex on him in order to get ahead in her career. All of these women's worlds collide when Gretchen publicly states that she was harassed by Ailes, upending the power dynamic at one of the most powerful organizations on earth.
The film is told in many ways similar to the recent political Adam McKay movies The Big Short and Vice, where the leading women will talk directly to the camera (Megyn most frequently, but definitely Gretchen at one point). This can be off-putting, and is more miss than hit when films try it, but I kind of liked it for Bombshell. The film's most impressive feat is the recreation of actresses as distinctive as Theron into exact replicas of their Fox News personas (the men are also impressive, though Lachlan Murdoch owes Jay Roach a muffin basket for having a bearded Ben Lawson hunkify him for the big screen). Having these personalities, whom the world is used to talking "directly to them" do so on a big screen makes sense-it instantly establishes them as Megyn Kelly & Gretchen Carlson, rather than just actors on a screen in convincing makeup.
The movie is hard to watch, particularly the scenes with Kayla. Perhaps because Kelly & Carlson's endings are so well-known (Carlson would win the lawsuit but has yet to land a high-profile news gig, Kelly would leave Fox but never escape its stench, failing spectacularly at NBC), Kayla is the audience surrogate, and the one with the cruelest fate, so the fact that we don't know how her story makes it all-the-more-heartbreaking when it ends with her essentially being assaulted (repeatedly) by Ailes.
All three actresses are good. This isn't a film that would require great acting, and it occasionally slips into caricature. It's so fun to watch some of the recreations of these people, and getting to judge from the seats people that liberals hate (make no mistake-while the issue of sexual harassment should be nonpartisan and is treated as such here, Jay Roach knows that it's going to be people who hate Fox News who will be seeing this movie and has acted accordingly with the script...my packed audience occasionally booed certain people from their seats), that you would be forgiven for seeing some of these people, especially side characters like Jeanine Pirro, as nothing more than cartoons. But these are world-class actors, and they find their moments. I keep thinking of the cautiousness of Kidman as Gretchen, someone smarter than the men in the room but who knows she has to play the part of a former beauty queen to stay in the game, slowly breaking out of her shell. There's also the great scene where Megyn talks to Kayla, and then refuses to take any of the blame for shielding Roger because she can't face the fact that while Roger is the one who is to blame here, her silence made Ailes rich, Kayla vulnerable, and continued a network that would eventually elect Donald Trump.
This is perhaps the only time in the movie that the film really hints at what is the biggest problem for this picture-that we're left with Megyn Kelly & Gretchen Carlson as our heroes. I talked about this at the time, but Carlson & Kelly as heroes didn't sit well with people on the left who had seen them as enemies for years. It's easier to separate the real-life good they did with taking down Ailes with the horrible damage they did when they were at Fox News, but watching them in a movie is different, and the balance isn't right. We don't see enough of the moments where Carlson dumbs down television by being someone educated at Oxford who claims there's a "War on Christmas" and not enough time is spent on Kelly essentially putting her career ahead of women's rights & helping in a large part to hurt women everywhere by forgiving Donald Trump. These pop up occasionally, but it feels more like a "cover your butt" move from Roach than trying to incorporate these very complicated, nasty bits of these women's legacies into a film that wants them to just be feminist trailblazers. This is a pity, as Bombshell is very watchable, and they have the likes of Theron, Kidman, and Robbie ready to not just be movie stars, but find the souls of these women, even if they are complicated.
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