Charlize Theron IS Megyn Kelly in the Enjoyable — But Inaccurate— Bombshell
Ah, FOX News. If you’re looking for “REAL News”, this ain’t it chief. Their weird fix on President Donald J. Trump being “The Chosen One” and constantly praising his disastrous administration while crucifixing the “socialist left” is always a pleasure to watch. Never forget when Tucker Carlson called “White Supremacy” a lie and/or when Sean Hannity and Judge Jeanine Pirro went to a Trump rally and started weirdly praising the dude like the Second Coming of Christ. Like MSNBC and CNN being a cult for the anti-Trump left, FOX News is a cult for the pro-Trump right. Believe it or not, conservatives, but FOX News is very well part of “the mainstream media”. Our media culture has declined due to news channel such as MSNBC, CNN and FOX News delivering “news” in a highly-partisan way. None of those channels can be trusted for giving accurate, non-partisan, information. Yes, all anchors do have their own political opinions, but, in my opinion, it’s best that they keep their own opinions to themselves. Remember Althia Raj’s partisan intervention on Bill 21 at the English Language Leaders’ Debate and how that caused controversy in many Québec newspapers, even if she said that French was her first language.
Bombshell tries to be non-partisan, but you can’t really talk about its issue without having a penchant to the left. Director Jay Roach tells the story of how news anchor Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) accused FOX News CEO Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) of sexual harassment. The film tries to expose, through Carlson, Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and fictional character Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) how they helped kick out Ailes and Bill O’Reilly (Kevin Dorff) and were precursors of the #MeToo movement, long before Harvey Weinstein was exposed.
Bombshell exposes the hypocrisy of FOX News, not through Kelly, Carlson or Pospisil, but with Kimberley Guilfoyle (Bree Condon), Ainsley Earhardt (Alice Eve), Martha MacCallum (Elizabeth Röhm) and Judge Jeanine Pirro (Alanna Ubach) who defend Roger Ailes’ sick behavior and even dare lie about Roger to protect him. When news anchors ask him if Roger forces them to wear tights and short skirts, they keep replying “no”, even if they are seen in stores buying the things they aren’t “forced” to wear. When Guilfoyle says “Roger Ailes champions women”, but doesn’t authorize women to wear pants for a “visual medium”, something is definitely wrong here. Every single actor that have minor roles and imitate the “diverse” brand of Christian Republicans FOX News have are excellent, especially Condon as Guilfoyle, Ubach as Pirro, Michael Buie as Brett Baier, Tony Plana as Geraldo Rivera, and not part of FOX News but a big supporter of them, Richard Kind doing the PERFECT impression of Rudy Giuliani.
This is what elevates Bombshell’s shallow script to a highly interesting film — its performances. Charlize Theron is simply perfect as Megyn Kelly, it’s incredible how uncanny she looks the part, with a fantastic makeup job, but if you were to compare Megyn Kelly/Charlize Theron side by side, she nails every inch of her voice and mannerisms. One scene in particular in which she asks the question to then presidential candidate Donald J. Trump on his misogynistic comments (“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs…”) or the viral response “You may have heard that there was a dust-up involving yours truly and presidential contender Donald Trump” perfectly encapsulates just how good Theron is in the role. Just like James Franco IS Tommy Wiseau in The Disaster Artist and Tom Hanks IS Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Charlize Theron IS Megyn Kelly and completely immerses herself in the character. I was riveted everytime she and Nicole Kidman were on-screen. Kidman is wholly underused as Gretchen Carlson, but everytime she’s on-screen, she looks and sounds the part of Carlson in uncanny precision. The same can be said for a commanding John Lithgow as Roger Ailes. Everytime Litghow as Ailes is on screen, I was riveted. The makeup is one of the film’s strongest elements, and the high-quality actors director Jay Roach chose for the part of the real-life personalities don’t just LOOK the part, but are able to imitate their real-life counterparts to perfection. The strongest performances are Theron as Kelly and Lithgow as Ailes.
The addition of the fictitious Kayla Pospisil and Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon) makes Bombshell a little problematic. Yes, Margot Robbie is deserving of her Golden Globe nomination, as she is excellent in the role, but her character (and McKinnon’s character) make Bombshell’s dramatizations of the events that led to Roger Ailes’ firing inaccurate. Pospisil is made to be an amalgamation of multiple women that worked at FOX News, as she is a pureblood Christian Republican that in any way, shape or form, doesn’t resemble the rhetoric Tomi Lahren says. Kate McKinnon’s character is a closeted lesbian/democrat/liberal who works at FOX News (oh joy…) at Bill O’Reilly’s team. Both characters never existed, and, as such, makes Bombshell factually inaccurate. Inaccurate by their fictitious characters that apparently played a key role in firing Roger Ailes, even though none of the interactions with Kayla and Ailes ever happened, but also inaccurate by the film’s wild conspiracy theories. At the beginning of the film, Megyn Kelly’s coffee is poisoned, apparently, by Donald J. Trump’s campaign team, even though it didn’t happen like that in real life. Jay Roach’s partisan viewpoints on Trump takes over and meddles with the film’s factual accuracies.
As much as Bombshell says it’s a non-partisan drama on exposing Roger Ailes’ predatory behavior and the hypocrticial right defending him, you can’t help but feel Jay Roach’s political allegiances that falter the film’s factual accuracies. By creating fictitious characters and pretending that what is shown on-screen is real. I do appreciate the real-life women that came forward and shared their side of the story (in the movie) via photos & audio, describing the sickening behavior of Roger Ailes, without using fictitious characters. However, Bombshell’s inaccurate and shallow story that never really goes deep in the psychology of Gretchen Carlson’s emotional trauma and Megyn Kelly’s abuse by Ailes makes for pedantic storytelling. It’s still a highly enjoyable movie, however, with perfect imitations of the FOX News staff, by a perfect Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and John Lithgow. The years of watching FOX News ironically as a meme pays off when the film captures the news channel’s cheap aesthetics and lowbrow information that conservatives swallow because they hear what they want to hear. If you’re a conservative/republican who watches FOX News unironically, you will hate this. Be warned.
✯✯✯½
