Film Review: Long Shot

Sexuality/Nudity Mature
Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Mature
Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature


Charlize Theron is charismatic and charming.

Seth Rogen can be charismatic and charming.

So why is their latest comedy so boring?

Long Shot is the latest Rogen collaboration with director Jonathan Levine.  It stars Rogen as Fred Flarsky, a left-wing investigative reporter who has just lost his job because his paper has been purchased by a right-wing business man named Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis).  Flarsky is invited to a party by his best friend Lance (O'Shea Jackson Jr.).  At the part he bumps into Secretary of State Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron).  Field used to babysit Flarsky when she was in high school and he had a gigantic crush on her.  Field decides to hire Flarsky as a speech-writer to help her prepare for a presidential run.  Flarsky's uncouth style often puts him at odds with Field's handlers Maggie (June Diane Raphael) and Tom (Ravi Patel).  While travelling the world on a diplomatic tour, the Fields and Flarsky grow closer and closer.

Theron is fantastic in this movie.  She shows charm, grace, strength, intelligence, and leadership without losing any of her femininity.  When you couple Rogen and Theron, it is the classic "I don't know what she sees in him" situation.  Rogen has no trouble selling his affections for Theron, because it is easy to understand.  But Theron's greatest feat is that you completely buy into her falling in love with Rogen.  The script doesn't help nearly as much as it should, so Theron has to convince us with her performance and it surprisingly words incredibly well.  Rogen does his best and is adequate in the role.  He even reaches some level of charm and sophistication, however briefly.  Raphael is fantastic as the sardonic Maggie.  Her disdain at all things does not come off as cloying but as a welcome pressure release for the ridiculousness of the premise.  

But the movie ultimately does not work.

The primary reason is that it isn't funny.  Humor is very subjective, so perhaps other people will find more laughs than I did.  Particularly, I am not a fan of drug humor.  Flarsky gets picked up by Secret Service and brought to a federal building, there is a scene where he has to empty his drug paraphernalia before he enters.  I heard some people laughing in the theater, but the moment passed by me without a giggle.  And that is the way most of the jokes went for me.  The jokes were also directed primarily against those at the political right.  Flarsky releases a lot of venom on his political opponents, but this could alienate anyone whose politics are not aligned that way.  It is possible to do a political comedy that makes fun of all sides, but this movie fails.  This is despite the fact that the movie calls itself out for its own political bias.  By the time that scene comes around, it is too little, too late.

On top of that, the movie is simply gross.  And while there is a place for gross-out humor, it doesn't really fit into a romantic comedy.  At one point, Flarsky does something (a thing I will not repeat on this blog), that causes him to say "Yucky!"  And that was the feeling I had about the entire film.  The movie wants to say something insightful about media, politics, and feminism.  It keeps dropping lines like little truth bombs for us to digest.  But the movie fails in maturity so it cannot be taken in any way seriously.

It isn't even that the movie falls short and slightly misses the mark.  The film's failures begin to drag on the narrative.  It becomes a boring slog where you begin to yearn for the finale.  There is a sequence in the film where Fields lets Flarsky get her high on ecstasy, but then she has to deal with an international crisis.  There is nothing funny about this scene.  In fact, I was getting angry at her character.  This scene alone completely steps over the movie's objective.  We are supposed to want Fields to be president.  This scene alone shows you why this would be a terrible idea.  The movie's content makes you root against their protagonists' objectives, and that makes for unpleasant movie-watching.

Ultimately, the movie could have done something with the raw materials assembled, but the script is too self-satisfied without being funny enough to endear itself.

A "long shot" is something that could succeed but the odds against it mean that it probably won't.  And that is the case with this film.