Late Night Is A Solid Comedy With an Outstanding Emma Thompson Performance

One of my all-time favorite books is The War for Late Night by Bill Carter, a 2010 book chronicling the events leading up to, during and after the whole early 2010 fiasco involving Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and The Tonight Show. Lots of great anecdotes about the various American late night shows hosts in that tome including extensive descriptions about what it's like to work for David Letterman. One such description had unnamed employees of his note that Letterman was a distant comic driven by anger and frustration in his work, but whenever he began to verbally beat himself up in front of his staff, they would immediately wish he'd redirect that anger unto them rather than continue to drag himself.

The Failed Attempts At Comedy Were Coming From Inside The House!!!

Poet Mark Strand once wrote how "Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing; When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end." It is true that the end of our lives is full of uncertainty, but even I could have never predicted that my end of always expecting the best from a Will Ferrell movie would come from such a listless movie like The House. As someone who considers The Other Guys, Elf and Anchorman to be among the best 21st century comedies (heck, I even enjoyed Land Of The Lost!), seeing Ferrell follow up abysmal torturous comedies like Get Hard and Daddy's Home with yet another terrible comedy that pairs him up with Amy Poehler and a whole bunch of funny people (including Nick Kroll and Jason Mantzoukas) to such dismal results is...painful, it's just painful to watch really.