‘Long Shot’ Is a Pleasant Surprise

Mainstream Hollywood is nursing a decade-long hangover from the noughties and the whole industry is fumbling to get back up on its hind legs in the era of #MeToo and extreme political polarisation. That is, on the one hand, big-budget, wide-appeal features are still deeply rooted in tried-and-tested tropes somewhere along the superhero-franchise/crass-drug-and-sex-humour axis, and on the other there is an undeniable Netflix-induced drive to perhaps patronise the audience less as well as appeal to their political sensibilities, whether in earnest or in a purely bottom line-driven effort. In other words, we’re stuck in limbo between the insultingly formulaic Jurassic World and the razor-sharp execution of Someone Great. You might have guessed where I’m going with this: it’s also where Long Shot lives, a smart departure from pure Superbad-era Rogen, but not an unadulterated success either.

Long Shot stars Charlize Theron as U.S. Secretary of State Charlotte Field, a presidential hopeful, and Seth Rogen as leftist Brooklynite journalist Fred Flarsky, who quits his job at an independent publication after it is acquired by a dirtbag media mogul. They meet by coincidence at a party years after Charlotte used to babysit Fred, and she soon hires him as one of her speech writers. They bone. I hear you groaning at the synopsis, but humour me for a quick sec. This film takes the premise of Knocked Up and effectively turns it on its head. Where Katherine Heigl was painted as a shrill, humourless shrew whose job it was to elevate a weed-smoking man-child Rogen into responsible fatherhood, Long Shot critiques the patriarchal structure that pressures women into this kind of emotional labour, in addition to the pressures of pregnancy and regardless of their professional status (Heigl played a TV producer while Rogen was blissfully unemployed — that they ended up together is frankly depressing).

Theron is the true star of Long Shot; Rogen is her jester and most faithful supporter. Field is a humane representation of a female presidential candidate, competent, intelligent, real, funny, yet spread thin by the endless, impossible demands of being a woman in the political space and the public arena more generally. On the other hand, Rogen’s Flarsky may be a loud, inappropriate stoner with the dress sense of a 14-year-old, but he is also a kind man and fearless journalist who refuses to let Charlotte compromise on her values for the sake of playing the game. As such, for the majority of this movie you can feel damn good about rooting for its protagonists as they find their way to each other reverse Pretty Woman-style. It’s satisfyingly feminist and genuinely funny, but for me it falls short on two counts. Firstly, and although we are meant to understand Charlotte as relatively liberal, the script stays purposefully vague on her concrete political leaning, and even includes an incomprehensible scene meant to challenge Fred to “see both sides.” This seems like ridiculous pandering, considering conservatives would already be decidedly pissed off by this stage, so like, can we very much not? Secondly, after maybe an hour of Good Jokes, the writers just couldn’t help but fall back into precisely the aggressive Superbad-era toilet humour I’ve been decrying — not offensive, but just not that funny. Despite all this, Long Shot remains thoroughly enjoyable and I think you should see it.

8/10