Like most Seth Rogen vehicles, Long Shot is a tightly wound, middle-concept 90-minute comedy crammed into two hours. Its conceit, of a monstrously qualified, thoroughly vetted presidential hopeful growing closer to the schlubby childhood friend she hires as a speechwriter, is a new spin on an old classic, pairing Rogen with an impossibly beautiful co-lead as an unlikely paramour. In this case, Rogen, plays strident political journalist Fred Flarsky, reunites with teenage-crush-turned-Secretary-of-State Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron), who is gearing up for a presidential run to replace her dimwitted TV star commander-in-chief (Bob Odenkirk), who wishes to parlay high office into film roles.
The film struggles to find a tone out of the gate. Fred, a hardcore investigative journalist so committed to exposing the evils of American society that he infiltrates a neo-Nazi group of online trolls and even nearly gets a swastika tattoo to blend in, quits his gig when his alt-weekly employer is sold to Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis, in live action but under ludicrously bulbous prosthetics), a Murdoch-esque figure. Fred’s story immediately introduces some specific critiques about the state of modern media, including the gradual erosion of alternative publications in a concentrated effort by the wealthy to eliminate voices of dissent.
Contrast that with Charlotte, who is portrayed as a souped-up Hillary Clinton, the same ironclad resumé attached to an altogether more popular candidate. In fact, Charlotte comes back into Fred’s life thanks to consultants who point out an approval rating in the 90th percentile that could be boosted only by working on her humor, itself a factor polling in the ’80s. The joke, as a consultant blatantly spells out, is that a woman has to have a near-perfect approval that a man would never have to achieve. Fred illuminates more esoteric truths about our current political climate, but Charlotte exists in a cartoonish world that exaggerates the most superficially obvious deficiencies of DC culture and the broader political apathy of the public. Charlotte may be a bold policy wonk with a lifetime of public service, but people only seem to care that she may or may not be dating the prime minister of Canada (Alexander Skarsgård playing a hilariously devastating parody of handsome empty suit Justin Trudeau).
Things pick up, though, when Fred officially comes aboard the Reid campaign. Compared to the immaculately styled and socially elegant Charlotte, or even the sartorially appropriate and emotionally calm staff under her wing, Fred is a disheveled mess in cargo pants and a neon windbreaker, and with a loud mouth willing to spout diatribes in situations that demand diplomacy. The film foregrounds the odd-couple pairing of Fred and Charlotte, yet Theron subtly layers in a believable fascination with her old acquaintance, a certain nostalgia for her own pre-office days of strident beliefs unchecked by the demands of compromise. He also expresses genuine interest in her outside of her work, and he begins to write speeches that exhibit her personality while still bowing to the pressures of international negotiation and campaign rabble-rousing.
Rogen naturally takes point on the improv-heavy comedy, but Theron gives structure that is so often missing to Rogen’s comedy. Charlotte responds to Fred’s tomfoolery with just the amount of mild approval, capable of shutting him down in an instant when he steps over a line and threatens her image but also able to laugh at and even expand upon his wisecracks in private settings. And when circumstance shove the two characters together in a fraught moment of tension that escalates latent romantic feelings, what could easily have been the movie’s moment of peak contrivance is instead beautifully sold through a deep chemistry shared by the leads and a sweet confession of nervousness by both. When Fred, referencing his attempt to kiss Charlotte as a teen, haltingly whispers he wants to try again but not repeat his old mistake, Theron puts such naked longing into the way that Charlotte responds that it would not be a mistake that any objections to the pairing is instantly invalidated.
The rest of the film uses the couple’s budding romance to give a focal point to the scattershot political comedy, reorienting the scrambled barbs about both compromise and the lack thereof around the question of how being linked to a schlub like Fred would affect Charlotte’s public likability. This brings out the best in Rogen’s comic bedrock of nebbish insecurity, as well as extra venom from June Diane Raphael’s staffer, Maggie, who plays upon all of Fred’s doubts about the imbalance in his relationship to emphasize how ruinous this could be for Charlotte. Rogen and Theron’s assured interplay pays off biggest in a riotous sequence of the secretary letting her hair down and going clubbing with Fred, which causes issues when she must mitigate a hostage situation while high on ecstasy.
Only at the end, when this all comes to a head in such a way as to sympathize with Fred’s intransigence and refusal to clean up over Charlotte’s desperate attempts to preserve their relationship along with her career aspirations, does the film lose the plot. The issue is worsened by a tidy emotional conclusion that critiques Fred only for his failure to embrace the poisoned art of bipartisanship and has Charlotte assert herself against extortionary tactics against her progressive reforms not to save her policies but to protect her romance. These are bad finishing line stumbles at the end of a film that nonetheless overcomes many of its structural shortcomings on the sheer strength of its leads’ chemistry and wit.
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