‘Bombshell’ fizzles out despite strong performances — movie review

Bombshell tells the story of how the women of Fox News banded together to take down one of the most powerful predators in media

Quick review: Bombshell has a terrific performance by Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly and an interesting story worth telling. However, the muddled tone, hollow characters, and awkward pacing make it a forgettable watch.

There’s been a trend in the film industry of tackling serious topics and difficult people — that’s being kind — with a heavy dose of comedy and satire. In particular, Adam McKay seems to have cracked the code with the 2008 financial crisis movie The Big Short — which is good — and the Dick Cheney biopic Vice — which is bad. Then there was Craig Gillespie’s Tonya Harding biopic I, Tonya. Other than a shared style, these three movies had tremendous Oscar success. Keep that in mind when watching Bombshell — a new movie by Jay Roach following the demise of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes at the hands of several women at the network. 

Truthfully, it feels like Bombshell is the worst version of this kind of movie because it feels like the story doesn’t justify the style — characters talking to the camera, punchy graphics popping up on the screen. Though, maybe it does. The Big Short’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Charles Randolph penned the script, so maybe it’s Roach that went wrong with the equation. The uneven tone shows just how much control someone like McKay had over his movies. 

We follow three women working at Fox News. An eerily transformed Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, and Margot Robbie as the fictional Kayla Pospisil — an upstart keen on greatness at the network. The movie starts with a promising look into the fallout following the first Republican Primary Debate in 2016 where she confronted Donald Trump about his long history of harassment of women and misogyny.

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After the brush-up, she gives us a to the camera tour of the Fox News offices where we learn about the setup of the organization. Ailes and the VPs that serve him are on the second floor while the owners of the network, the Murdochs, are on the eighth. While she’s dealing with harassment from angry Trump voters, the media, and even people within the network, Carlson is preparing for war. 

After showing her lawyers a reel of misogynistic comments and moments on-air — she assures them that worse happened behind-the-scenes — she gets ready to be fired and subsequently sue Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. Meanwhile, Kayla, who was recently promoted to working on The O’Reilly Factor, maneuvers her way into meeting Ailes to be considered for on-air work explaining that Fox News is like a religion to her conservative family. However, during an uncomfortable meeting with Ailes, he asks her to slowly lift her dress as he “assesses” whether she’s fit to be in front of the camera.

Theron is pure electricity as Megyn Kelly — and it’s not just the makeup job like some recent Oscar winner. While the physical transformation helps, it’s the physicality that she imbues her with that makes it remarkable. There are subtle ways she captures Kelly — the way she carries herself, the cadence and deliberateness when she talks, her almost slow-motion movements. Without that central performance, the movie would fall apart. 

The other woman are solid too. Kidman is a seasoned pro and does the best that she could with Carlson. However, the character is shamefully underwritten, which is a key problem with the movie. Because we split our time between Kelly, Carlson, and Kayla, we never get time to understand them outside of this particular situation. They’re reduced to vessels rather than actual people — maybe it’s because the actual people aren’t that great either. As for Robbie, she does great work, but her character feels like a construction for the story.

That shouldn’t detract from the message. It seems to have been made with good intentions. Powerful men can be stopped when we support victims and when victims support each other. However, I don’t think Roach was equipped to tell that story. Rather than one about the victims, he focused on the intrigue. Instead of coalescing around Carlson’s crusade and the other woman around her, he’s more interested in Kelly’s journey to speaking out, as well. The issue there is that that journey isn’t entirely compelling either. 

There are more layers to Bombshell than I am equipped to go into. So, I’ll leave you with this. More than being bad, it’s forgettable. Other than the scenes where Theron is giving room to flex her characterization, the rest of the movie feels is awkwardly paced, unevenly toned, and, to be frank, a slog. For a movie called Bombshell, it really has no impact. The news might even be more interesting.