Movie Reaction: Long Shot

Formula: The American President / Pretty Woman

It's hard to be a bigger Seth Rogen fan than I am. Five of his movies showed up in my last Top 100 movies of All Time list (with 2 more in contention for my next edition). I like him as a director, a producer, an actor, and especially a writer. He is one of the few celebrities who, if he was #MeToo'd, I would be genuinely upset. He's always been hyper-aware of his persona and is great at playing on it for dramatic effect when called to (Take This Waltz, Steve Jobs). There's something about him that I'm drawn to. I just love watching things he's involved in.

That said, Long Shot was hard for me to get through.

That's his latest film, co-starring him and Charlize Theron, who plays a Secretary of State beginning a presidential run who falls for her speech writer (Rogen) who she used to babysit. I've seen a lot of people call it an inverted Pretty Woman. I don't agree. Seth Rogen's Fred Flarsky is a fairly talented journalist in his own right before taking the speech writing job. The central conflict in the movie is a public figure (Theron's Sec. Charlotte Field) risking her political future to be with a guy she falls for. That sounds a lot more like The American President to me.

Long Shot tries really hard to do what The American President does. The magic trick of The American President is how inside a sweet and romantic movie, the Aaron Sorkin script sneaks in a pretty good movie about politics. It's Sorkin's tryout for The West Wing and it remains one of the most easily rewatchable movies I've seen. Long Shot would like to be that while mixing in some bawdy or crude humor too. And it's unsuccessful at it.

The movie about Seth Rogen dating a beautiful and successful woman who everyone knows is too good for him works pretty well. To be blunt, Rogen (and mainstream comedy in genera)l has been built his career on that premise. He's great at that kind of role. He's funny and just charming enough that you can believe the woman could like him. Charlize Theron doesn't play comedy as often, but she's good at everything. It helps that she's playing the straight man. A movie that just focused on getting me to believe in that unlikely romance could work.

Instead, the movie keeps adding layer upon layer to the story. So, Theron is a woman in power. That exposes the societal double standards between men and woman. To run for president, she has to be more concerned about things like poise and humor than policy to convince people to vote for her. There's a subplot about how a piece of legislation she's trying to get pushed through keeps getting compromised until there's nothing left of it. The movie tries to make the argument that both sides of the political debate need to stop looking at each other as the enemy. A good message, but not one that fits with most of what's happening in the rest of the movie. It has to make time for some lazy Trump-bashing. Bob Odenkirk plays the beloved current president who was elected into office because he was on a successful TV show for years (playing the President). He's a complete oaf who is easily corrupted. Andy Serkis plays the owner of a major conservative media conglomerate (essentially a mix of Roger Ailes, Steve Bannon, and Rupert Murdoch). Neither of the stories with their characters are compelling, interesting, or clever. The focus in the movie is spread so thin that nothing really works. That includes the central romance.

I'm afraid I didn't buy Rogen and Theron as a couple at all. I believe they would have a fling. He reminds her of her past. He's an escape for her. They are in close proximity, travelling all over the world. I can easily see how they'd stark hooking up. It never moves into love territory though. I don't buy that she would throw away her career for him. It happens too quickly and too absolutely. I actually don't mind the fact that she's too successful and beautiful to be attracted to him. That's baked into the premise. Even if he was played by Henry Cavill and won a Pulitzer, I'd have trouble buying the relationship. It's a structural issue.

I never understood the rules of this world. It had one foot in the real world and one in a cartoon world. I was never sure when it was safe to laugh. Which moments are sobering indictments of the political system and which moments are funny character beats? This is a movie that asks me to take Theron's character seriously as a presidential candidate but also laugh as she's negotiating a prisoner exchange while high on Molly. I've been mixed on director Jonathan Levine's movies in the past. 50/50 was great because it existed clearly in the real world. The Night Before worked because it knew it was a cartoon. Warm Bodies struggled because I couldn't figure out how much it wanted to be a comedy. (Snatched was just bad, so the less said, the better.)

The only thing keeping me from outright hating this movie is that it was able to make me laugh on occasion. Maybe not as much as I should've laughed, but I did laugh. I love Theron and Rogen (not really as a couple). I can watch them in just about anything just because they know how to hold an audience's attention. The supporting cast is OK. O'Shea Jackson Jr. is funny enough. Like his father, his comedy stems a lot from how willing he is to go against type (Sort of the inverse Teddy Roosevelt: Speak loudly, but carry a small stick). June Diane Raphael only gets about one note to play. It's a funny note that she plays well, but it is only one note. The few things that do work though, aren't enough to make up for the mess of half-explored ideas that dominate the movie.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

After the Credits

Here's a great encapsulation of what I mean about the tone not being clear. So, there's the scene when Charlotte is being ambushed by Odenkirk and Serkis. It's as dramatic as any scene gets. They show her a video they have of Rogen's character masturbating. That's clearly meant to be a gross-out humor moment. I had no idea how to respond to it though. It didn't feel right to laugh, because it was a bad moment for Charlotte in a dramatic scene, but that bit of lewd humor was meant to be a shocking, big laugh moment. If my theater was any indication of the average audience, then it's a moment that no one knew what to do with. It died. That's sums up the tone of most of the movie. I recognized when jokes were happening but they rarely landed, often because they were happening in the middle of things I wasn't meant to laugh at.