Writers: Liz Hannah & Dan Sterling 

Director: Jonathan Levine 

Long Shot is a film that switches from feeling like an idiosyncratic rom-com to plodding one – often from scene to scene. While it contains some interesting satire about U.S. political discourse and the representation of female politicians in the media, which makes it distinctive from many rom-coms, its rudimentary plotting leaves it feeling rather tame.  

The film concerns Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) a Secretary of State about to begin a world tour before announcing a run for the Presidency. Her love interest is Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) a stoner journalist, who quits his job at a newspaper after it’s bought by a Fox News-like company and is hired by Field as a speech writer. They knew it each from childhood and their relationship follows the usual, somewhat tedious path of the rom-com: embarrassing first meeting creates intimacy, the schluby dude teaches the pristine woman some kind of ‘truth’ that forces her to perceive him differently, a kiss after something intense happens, a break-up followed by ‘I Love You’ less than 24 hours later.  

Both Theron and Rogan are good in their respective roles, although are they are playing very much to type. June Diane Raphael is excellent as Field’s Chief of Staff Maggie Millikin, a character with cleverness and a caustic wit. Bob Odenkirk is great as a TV star turned President, who delivers perhaps the film’s funniest line, ‘No, I will not nuke a tsunami.’ Where the film struggles is when writers Liz Hannah and Dan Sterling get confused as to what constitutes radical in a rom-com context. The brilliant and often hilarious satire of the sexualisation of female politicians in the media is radical, watching a relatively straight politician taking MDMA isn’t. It’s a scene and idea we have seen played a 1000 times. And that is where the film falters, when it struggles to raise itself from the clichés of cinematic comedy; whether it be drug taking or falling out of windows or an unfortunate masturbation experience.  

Long Shot is a somewhat interesting but mostly unremarkable rom-com. It is no sense a bad film, but the beats of the story have been written for decades, and that is the film’s central fault; what could have been a radical, genre-bending film instead feels sweet but inconsequential.  

7/10