If you don’t like romantic comedies, then we can’t be friends.
If you think about the romantic-comedy genre, and you’re asked to name the best one ever, a lot of the same answers pop up.
When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Woman, Notting Hill, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Four Weddings And A Funeral, While You Were Sleeping, Sleepless In Seattle… all great examples, but all at least two decades old.
For whatever reason, the rom-com has fallen out of favour, finding a home on Netflix with the likes of Set It Up, All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, and Someone Great all getting the wide audiences they deserve.
However, if Long Shot marks the return of the genre’s popularity on the big screen, then we’re 100% here for that.
In it, Charlize Theron plays Secretary Of State to Bob Odenkirk’s US President (he played a President on a popular TV show, which was enough to get him voted in). However, it doesn’t look like he’ll be running for a second term, and Theron figures she’s the best person to take over once he returns to the world of acting. However, her PR team is concerned that the general public find her too cold, as her speeches tend to be humourless and impersonal, even though they contain much more important stuff, like ideas on how to save the planet.
Meanwhile, Seth Rogen plays a top-tier investigative journalist (when we first meet him, he is undercover at a Neo-Nazi convention), but his hyper-left-wing publication has just been bought out by a Not-Quite-Murdoch, super-right-wing conglomerate (owned by an almost unrecognisable Andy Serkis), which prompts Rogen to quit his job.
When his BFF (O’Shea Jackson Jr., playing a hype-man we all need in our lives) gets him drunk to take his mind of his troubles, they end up crashing a fancy party, with Boyz II Men performing live, and Theron there to rub shoulders with the rich and powerful. The chance meeting winds up being a reunion, as Theron was actually Rogen’s babysitter earlier in life, and she ends up hiring him to be her new speech writer, because (A) he knows her, and (B) he’s funny.
It is all the kind of plot that seems vaguely tethered to reality, but might as well be sci-fi as any other genre, such is the level of suspension of disbelief you need to get on board to accept the plot’s machinations. Not that any of those speed bumps actually matter, as Theron and Rogen have some fantastic chemistry together, and it turns out the push of the story isn’t whether these two will get together, but considering their drastically different lives, can they actually stay together?
Coming from writers behind South Park, Girls, and Spielberg political drama The Post, the tone does seem to veer wildly from scene to scene. In one breath, there are some intelligent, deep debates about the “dick-shriveling” nature of dating women in a position of power, and the hoops they have to jump through in order to maintain a sense of approachability, something that powerful men never need to concern themselves with.
But in the very next scene, Theron is acting like someone who was raised in a culture-proof nuclear bunker (when Rogen asked if she’s ever done drugs: “Weed? Molly?”, she replies by asking “Who is Molly?”), or they’ll dress Rogen up in a ridiculous outfit because… well, it turns out making jokes about speeches is hard, and it is easier to have Rogen make a fool of himself.
Again, not that any of this is much of a problem, as director Jonathan Levine (50/50, The Night Before) knows he is on to a winner with his central couple, both extremely likeable and armed with precision comedic timing, so mostly he just steps back and lets them do their thing.
And their thing is pretty great. A rom-com for the ages? Not quite, but as close as we’ve gotten for a long time.
Long Shot is released in Irish cinemas from Friday 3 May.
Clip via Lionsgate Movies
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