Long Shot - the latest film from 50/50 and Warm Bodies director Jonathan Levine - pretty much lays all its cards out right up front. The movie is one part romantic comedy, one part political satire, and honestly, it’s not all that convincing in either department. As a politically charged movie, it makes its agenda known from the get-go, and brings up a lot of situations that harken back to real-life political drama, though it never offers anything to say beyond that. As a romantic-comedy, it goes for an odd couple approach, but it’s almost impossible to buy either lead as real people.
The movie follows Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen), a journalist who quits his job when a media conglomerate (run by Andy Serkis in some odd makeup) takes over his small time newspaper company. He later goes to a party with his best friend Lance (O’Shea Jackson Jr) and runs into an old high school crush of his, Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron), who is now the Secretary of State. Charlotte is starting her campaign for President when she discovers the current President (Bob Odenkirk) is not pursuing a second term, and needs someone to punch-up her speeches. So she hires Fred, and after writing some well-received speeches, becomes her most trusted confidant, despite how many others perceive him.
The film tries to make a statement about how even those who seem most un-corrupted can eventually give in if it means power for them. There’s a conversation when Charlotte first hires Fred in which he says he’s not sure if he wants to take the job, because he feels like Charlotte will say what people will want to hear to get votes, and not actually follow through. Charlotte assures him she plans on keeping her promises. And sure enough, there’s a scene much later on in the film where she will get the backing of Odenkirk’s President and Serkis’ newspaper mogul, if she stands down on one of her proposed changes, and she caves in. This leads to Fred and Charlotte arguing where Fred tells her how she promised this wasn’t going to happen.
That’s essentially how this movie handles nearly every situation. It’s essentially characters making running commentary on situations and stating the obvious. But nothing more. And it’s kind of ironic, when one thinks about it. Part of Fred’s whole agenda is that he wants action taken. He doesn’t want politicians to just say what people want to hear and do nothing about it. Yet, at this point, anyone who’s even vaguely familiar with politics knows that all politicians renege on their campaign promises. Yet, nothing further is said beyond this statement. One wonders what the whole point of bringing all this up is, if it just spits back the obvious.
When it comes to film, the golden rule is “show, don’t tell.” But Long Shot looks to break that rule at every instance it can find. Take, for example, a scene in which Jackson’s character, Lance, is introduced. Fred has just quit his job, and finds Lance at the company he runs. Lance proclaims to everyone in the office how Fred is his best friend for so many years and when they’re feeling down, they go to a bar and get drunk. And then they do just that, right before he dismisses everyone from work for the day. There was no joke in there. No punchline. Just a character loudly making a statement and moving on.
This leads to another issue the movie has. Nearly everyone here has zero chemistry with one another. It almost needs to remind the audience of their relationship with one another because if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any other way to buy any of these characters as functioning human beings. Everyone here is talented on their own, and maybe with a better screenplay - shockingly co-written by Liz Hannah, who wrote the much better journalism movie, The Post - they could have done great things.
But Rogen and Jackson are not convincing at all as best friends, feeling like they are acting in two totally different movies. Meanwhile, anytime Odenkirk shares the screen with Theron or Serkis, it feels like they’re talking to the wall, while he’s acting by himself in a Mr. Show sketch. And most importantly, Rogen and Theron are the furthest thing from convincing as romantic leads. Even in another setting entirely, Rogen and Theron don’t look like two people who would necessarily hit it off romantically. But that’s not the frustrating part. The issue is that the movie is well aware of the fact, and does whatever it can to beat it into everyone’s heads that it’s not true, without anyone actually working to convince the audience of that idea.
Much of the conflict stems from Fred being visually unappealing and the fact that the public won’t like seeing him paired up with the upscale, more popular Charlotte. Even the name Fred Flarsky is just symbolic of the writers trying too hard to make him unattractive in every way possible. There are multiple conversations repeating the same exchange in different variants throughout the movie, yet it’s not like there’s some profound moment from either character that will help prove anyone wrong. It’s as if the characters just say something’s going to work over and over again, it’ll eventually work.
And what’s baffling is how Charlotte is, because for someone who has such a following, she’s actually pretty inept. While there’s no hiding that Fred Flarsky isn’t meant to be the strongest character at times, what’s insulting is that the movie tries to portray Charlotte as a strong female lead, and she’s the furthest thing from it. Whereas Theron’s Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the ultimate feminist movie icons in recent history, Charlotte Field is the anti-feminist icon.
In order to make it anywhere in politics, one needs to have at least some social skills, but Charlotte is portrayed as having barely any, which makes little to no sense. She is so wrapped up in her political career that she’s portrayed as having no concept of anything outside of politics. There’s one painful exchange in particular where she’s talking about drugs with Fred and keeps screwing up the lingo, saying things such as “let’s smoke a molly.” And she apparently doesn’t even know how to wave to the general public, with one scene even dedicated to her fixing this flaw. There’s no way a well-liked politician, let alone a fully functional human, would be that sheltered.
For a movie that’s meant to be both a satire and a romantic comedy, it’s simply not funny. The characters all feel like stock characters with the same one-note joke, rather than being three-dimensional people. Odenkirk is a president who somehow already has time to act on a semi-regular basis, while Theron babysat for Rogen in high school when their characters were only three years apart. The movie attempts to have a mature tone at times, but then jarringly throws in jokes that feel like they would be in a much cheaper-feeling movie, with an opening scene involving Rogen jumping out of a three-story window and barely getting hurt, while there are multiple scenes involving drugs that are meant to be funny just because they involve drugs.
And when the movie attempts to have a sweeter, more mature tone, it’s incredibly manipulative. The soundtrack is constantly filled with either an acoustic track or piano tune that plays almost on cue the moment that the film even remotely ventures into more serious territory. It felt almost to the point where one can count the amount of times there wasn’t a saccharine-sounding track accompanying a scene. And it’s heard fairly loud, too. If the blatantly obvious dialogue wasn’t an indicator that the audience was meant to feel a certain way in a scene, the music served as an even bigger reminder.
Long Shot is a movie made by usually reliable individuals that is a complete and total misfire. As a romantic comedy, it’s completely stiff. As a political satire, it says absolutely nothing other than things everyone already knows. The writing is filled with terrible dialogue, insultingly under-written characters, and jokes that are just not funny. A total waste of talent and time, this is one that should be avoided at all costs.
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