Review: LONG SHOT

Romcoms need to sell you the conflict early and fast. Political satires need to steer a tight channel between whimsy and cynicism. Both ask you to indulge them for the promise of a big, preposterous resolution. So what happens if you soften all of this and try to inject some everyday grind in among the one liners and physical gags? You get Long Shot and it takes a little adjustment.

It opens on a neo-nazi den where Seth Rogen's Fred tries to pass for one of them, gets found out and runs through a window and splats onto the footpath below looking like he's broken his neck. He gets up and taunts his incredulous tormentors. That is comedy. Charlize Theron's Charlotte, Secretary of State is coddling a Trumpish Bob Odenkirk president into endorsing her as a future presidential candidate as he repeats ideas she's just fed him as though they are his own. That's satire. The real meet cute of this movie is the collision of those two. I spent the first twenty minutes swinging between wanting to laugh more and preparing for some hard cynicism. Both happen and then they stop and then they start again.

Fred meets Charlotte at a charity do and they realise they knew each other as teenagers when she was his idealistic and hell-hot babysitter. Decades on, he's an idealistic journalist and she a political golden girl. After he takes a verbal swing at the Rupert Murdoch figure (an unrecognisable Andy Serkis) and then takes a massive fall down a staircase he's so lodged in her mind that he's engaged as her speechwriter. The middle act that brings them together despite contrary forces is a series of travel locations and tight spots that veer between farcical and poignant. Rogan playing to his audience with a well known and appealing shtick of intelligent goof and Theron again showing a flair for comedy using poise to generate laughs (see also Cary Grant in his own romcoms).

And then we get the big break in the third act where characters choose between happiness or aggrandisement but we also get the tightening swing between the two types of comedy and where earlier scenes felt frustrating and directionless there is now resolution. But it still feels like it has taken too long to get to this point.

What saves this frequently very funny film from collapse is the demand we develop to see more of the leads. However hokey or deflated it gets we perk up at the interaction of Rogen and Theron who get the best lines but do work as a comedy pairing. Theron completely outclasses Rogen but even the awkwardness of this seems to work.

In the end it feels less substantial than it has been, nesting into a goofy feelgood conclusion that, for all its genuine issue-facing, feels warm. The romcom has won. I liked it the more time I had to think about it which is the opposite of more audacious fare from earlier decades like Bulworth or Wag the Dog which tripped over their self-congratulation without the irony they were labouring to create. Network or The Candidate this aint but it kinda works, anyway.