“The U.S. does not negotiate with terrorists… but we do negotiate with homies.”
Set in an alternate reality where a smart, successful, unmarried woman in 40’s has a legitimate chance at becoming President of the United States, Long Shot is exactly the kind of earnest, slapstick romcom I needed yesterday.
Picture this: It’s the middle of the afternoon. It’s raining. You’re feeling a little under the weather. You spent all of yesterday travelling home from another country; twelve hours of planes, trains, buses and cars. Your suitcase is waiting to be unpacked but there’s no urgency to the task. You’ve a blanket, some snacks, and for this brief moment in time, no obligations.
You want to watch something, but what? You don’t need a comfort movie—you couldn’t be more comfortable—but you don’t have the headspace to fully invest in a movie you might actually care about. What now?
The answer is Long Shot; one of the only times in recent memory where the endless stream of movies available at our fingertips actually suggested the exact right thing to watch in a reasonable timeframe.
The Scoop
After the sitting President agrees to endorse Secretary of State Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) as his successor, she finds herself in need of a speech writer to make her come across as more humorous. Meanwhile, journalist Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogan) finds himself unemployed, and wouldn’t you know, he and Charlotte grew up together. It would be pretty wild if they happened to reconnect somehow, wouldn’t it?
Seth Rogan is playing a version his usual stoner self here but filtered through a politically-opinionated worldview. I’m generally ambivalent on the guy—a lot of his movies aren’t quite my tempo—but I quite liked him in Long Shot. It’s fun watching a guy forced into making decisions that will negatively impact his life because of his own high moral standards, and he’s sweet and funny enough to be likeable.
Charlize Theron is great here, too. I had to kind of divorce myself from reality a bit in order to accept her character—it’s tough to accept that someone so high up in the U.S. political hierarchy could be a nice and idealistic person who hasn’t been even tangentially involved in some kind of war crime—but whatever. She’s funny, she’s humanised, and she has great chemistry with Rogan.
Their ‘odd couple’ dynamic really works in here, in part because both actors are really playing to their strengths, and the script allows both of them to experiment in each other’s worlds. Theron specifically shines during a sequence where she decides to take drugs with Fred, reaching a level of comedy unseen since her Arrested Development days.
Getting to the Point
I will admit that I didn’t so much as glance at a plot summary before starting into this movie, let alone check to see what genre it was (it’s fun to go into movies totally blind!) so I found the first act especially to be quite meandering. Charlotte ostensibly needs to hire Fred to boost her perceived ‘humour points’, but when that issue was being established, the film did a really poor job of making it feel important.
Cue me wondering what this movie was even about for the first half hour.
Charlotte didn’t struggle with being perceived as uptight or seem overly bothered by her apparent lack of ability to make a joke. Fred isn’t a foil for any real flaw in her personality, and it took me way too long to realise that this was actually a rom com. I feel like some simple tweaks—tweaks that would’ve opened the door to more comedy, by the way—would’ve made a world of difference, such as having Charlotte be comedically unfunny to the point where it feels that Fred’s presence feels necessary.
Regardless, the movie improves as it goes along, and I felt real tension around their relationship as various forces contrive to separate them. Andy Serkis is almost unrecognisable as right-wing media mogul Parker Wembley (asking the question what if Rupert Murdoch was half-Muppet) and Bob Oderkirk plays a self-obsessed President. Neither are giving gut-busting performances, but their weasel-ish, conniving presence in the story serves to keep Charlotte on her toes.
Conclusion
In the end, Long Shot isn’t an amazing movie. It avoids delving too deep into these characters’ psyche, there’s no deeper examination of the themes of environmentalism or mob mentality that the script flirts with, and the comedy stylings are deeply rooted in the slapstick/improv realm rather than smart joke writing.
But this was never going to be a masterpiece. It was honestly surprising to not see Judd Apatow’s name in the credits, especially given Rogan’s involvement, because this movie has all the hallmarks of latter-day Apatow. Movies like Long Shot skim the surface of character development and theme and that’s okay.
There are times when all you want to do is to turn your brain off on a rainy day when you’re feeling a little sick, a little tired, and laugh at a silly movie. The problem is that a lot of movies that aim to fall into that category of movie end up not actually being very funny. Long Shot won’t open your third eye, but it will make you laugh.
Sometimes, that’s all you need.
***
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