By Melissa Antoinette Garza
Every fem needs a gal pal that they get in ridiculous trouble with, have constant fun with and never ever fight with. For me, that’s my best friend of nearly 20 years. We met at Blockbuster and to this day have never had a harsh word between us. I love her, I do!! I had the pleasure of going with her Thursday night to see BOMBSHELL (2019).
Before going to see the movie, we hit 99 Restaurant and Pub to get some drinks and kill some time, so we weren’t exactly sober when we saw the flick. Thankfully, other than us and two guys who looked seriously misplaced, the theater was empty. Therefore, we could be a bit loud and wild without offending any peeps.
For those unfamiliar, BOMBSHELL is the true account of former Fox News personality, Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) taking down the disgusting, gross, sexually harassing prick Roger Ailes(John Lithgow). Ailes pissed me the fuck off. I always hated that douche and could tell he was a pervert years ago.
Roger Ailes is portrayed by John Lithgow. Usually, I love Lithgow. I even loved it when he tried to ban dancing in FOOTLOOSE (1984) and A Missy loves to dance. Here though, it was like George and Harry from HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS jumped into Seth Brundle’s transportation device and the result was this blob. Still, he was more humanlike than the actual Roger Ailes had been. I’m pretty sure Ailes was the result of a female Yeti mating with the Penguin from BATMAN RETURNS (1992). To put it plainly, he was NOT an attractive man.
Now, if Ailes was just a disgusting gross bitch, I’d let it slide. This toolbox was the head of Fox News right under the Murdoch clan, and he used his power to coerce female employees into sexual acts.
He tried to get a blowjob from Gretchen to push forward her career and forced female employees to wear short dresses. When Gretchen complained about how her co-hosts were sexually harassing her, Roger told her she was a man-hater and demoted her to a show at a shitty time-slot. He was a fucking slime-ball.
Gretchen is a smart cookie though. She sees the writing on the wall and knows this pervert is about to sack her. She goes to a few lawyers and gets the ball rolling to personally sue that Penguin fucker.
Meanwhile, Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) has one of the top rated programs on Fox News. She hosts the presidential debate and asks Donald Trump some pretty hard-hitting questions, which doesn’t sit well with the fans of Trump who watch Fox. Trump comes back insulting her left-and-right, and Megyn does her best to keep doing her job ignoring the insanity coming her way. She is flooded with hate mail, threats and weirdos who stalk her at her home. She goes to Ailes, who she has a somewhat friendly working relationship with for help. His hands are tied as Trump’s popularity rises. Megyn does an interview with Donald to try and smooth things over, but she struggles with the lack of support her network gave her.
As Gretchen continues to work at Fox and collect shit on Ailes, her young and very attractive assistant Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) decides to take a different job. She ends up working with Bill O’Reilly (Kevin Dorff) who was facing his own sexual harassment allegations.
The character of Kayla is a fictional representation that depicts what many of the women at Fox News endured during Ailes reign.
Kayla ends up sleeping with co-worker Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon). Full disclosure, I hate Kate McKinnon. I can’t stand her on SNL. She ruins every scene she’s in. She’s a worse actress than she is a comedian. Even while portraying a serious role, she has this unfunny snark and zero personality. She’s affected AF and I don’t know why she continues to get work.
Needless to say, I was not sold on the Kayla/Jess connection. I hated Jess.
Now, Kayla is fucking gorgeous. My best friend and I fawn over Margot Robbie. Both of us fancy fems and gents, so Robbie is definitely on our list of mutual crushes. Every time she was on screen with Kate, we were like “You can do so much better! You can have us!”
To be fair, the character of Jess sucked as much as Kate’s acting. Poor naïve and innocent Kayla is brought up to Roger’s room and coerced into sucking him off. Fucking gross!
When the harassment first starts, Kayla runs to Jess for advice and instead is given the cold shoulder. Jess’s career is more important than her lover’s wellbeing. Fuck her. I hate her. If I was with someone that I worked with and they were given shit by an old disgusting creep, I would be tearing the place apart. Computers would be smashed, the fuzz would inevitably be called and A Missy would be ready to throw down with that Yeti Penguin bitch.
When Gretchen finally gets the axe from Fox and her lawsuit makes the rounds, peeps quickly take sides. Pretty much everyone at Fox comes out in support for the creep. Megyn, on the other hand, knows Roger is guilty as sin. He had forced kisses and tried to coerce Kelly years ago. He threatened her job when she refused. Still, Megyn was a bit nervous about going public with her accusations. There were times Roger was decent to her, and that can fuck with a peep. When the abuser shows kindness at times, it’s an adult grooming of sorts. It can feel like a betrayal to turn on the douche, but that mind-fuck is all part of the abusive behavior.
Thankfully, common sense prevails when Megyn realizes how widespread Roger’s abuses were. She comes forward which helps Gretchen. In the end, there was enough evidence with the allegations from over twenty women and with Gretchen’s audiotapes of her conversations with Ailes which proved what a pervert creep that fat Penguin scumbag was.
BOMBSHELL gets so much right about sexual harassment in the work place. At one point, while a female employee is being harassed by her male boss, the viewers hear her thoughts. They are thoughts that near every fem has experienced at some point. The panic and silent attempts to word everything carefully is a feeling well-known. Despite, the dude being a complete fuckwit, there is something innately nurturing about many fems, where we still try to handle the situation with a soft hand. Part of it is the desire to keep the job and a professional relationship, but there’s another inclination of “Don’t hurt his feelings” that manifests. There is a strange dynamic that can develop where the harassed comforts the harasser because the harassment didn’t work. It’s insane and it definitely can damage the fem psyche, but it happens all the fucking time!
BOMBSHELL was a great movie with phenomenal actors and performances that perfectly conveys the damage sexual harassment does. I think there are some cats out there who still say, “It was her choice to go along with it…” but that’s not a choice! Women should not be expected or encouraged to engage in a sexual relationship with employers to keep their jobs or attain promotions.
I also commend the filmmakers for putting in a scene of Joe Biden sexually harassing and creeping on a woman. By doing that it illustrated that the movie wasn’t a partisan piece, but rather really focused on the issue at hand.
My only grievance outside of Kate McKinnon was some of the makeup. Specifically, it appeared that with Bill O’Reilly there was some weird CGI going on to make the actor look more like O’Reilly. Instead, it just looked like he went to a Halloween store and bought a mask of him. It was truly bizarre.
That’s just a minor thing though. It ain’t no thing. Seeing Malcolm McDowell portray Rupert Murdoch more than made up for some of the bad makeup. I love Malcolm McDowell, and you should do. He’s fab.
Scared Stiff Rating: 8/10
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