Tropic Sprockets / Bombshell

By Ian Brockway

Jay Roach (Game Change, Meet the Parents) directs a film about Fox News, focusing on the unsavory dealings of Roger Ailes and his sexual harassment while running the network. Scores of hopeful newswomen were targets including Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly. The film is well acted and produced but suffers from a routine narrative and a lack of emotional tone.

Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) is a top journalist on Fox News. Trump is gaining in popularity despite the base comments that he makes, usually at someone’s expense, with great bluster and bombast. Kelly is assigned to moderate the Republican Presidential Debate. She opens with a hard hitting question, challenging Trump’s misogynistic comments on women. Trump is taken aback and disparages Kelly online and later on air, mentioning her menstruation.

Soon the media is at her doorstep and an understandably fearful Kelly goes to Ailes (John Lithgow) for help. The sedentary Ailes, while at first making a show of boosting her, is merely patronizing.

Kelly’s problems only get worse.

Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) does a segment on the importance of women, stating that makeup is superficial.

Ailes goes ballistic.

Carlson won’t apologize. She meditates and decides to bring a lawsuit against Ailes.

Theron in particular as Kelly is perfection. She excels in Kelly’s low register along with her quickness of cadence. She becomes Megyn Kelly right before our eyes and is a true chameleon.

Ditto for Kidman as Carlson, Margot Robbie as hopeful anchor Kayla and the ubiquitous John Lithgow who does a fine job as the man you love to hate, jowls and all.

The cult actor Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) has a solid outing as the uber-powerful Rupert Murdoch, and comedian Kate McKinnon does handily as a covertly outspoken staffer, despite her employment of aghast expressions from other comedic roles.

The only fault in the film is its uninspiring tone and lack of charge. Ailes is a personally disgusting man with all his salivary talk on the importance of female legs, oral sex and kissing, not to mention his commandment that job candidates spin the news.

Carlson and Kelley are direct forthright and brave but there is no dramatic push. The film is flat and monotone. Aside from the wondrous acting of Theron, Kidman, Lithgow and Robbie, “Bombshell” is tepid and incidental, feeling like a macabre circle of rogues, a mere drooling wax museum.

This is not to say that the Ailes scandal was not important. It was, it is and always will be. The toxicity continues on in other settings and goes far deeper than the comic book graphics of Fox News. This event changed our perspective, birthed METOO and made these celebrity women vocal and right as human beings, regardless of political beliefs.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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