Truth, Love and the American Way
The new romantic comedy from director Jonathan Levine has been promoted as Pretty Woman with Seth Rogen as Julia Roberts and Charlize Theron as Richard Gere. Theron plays the smart, poised Secretary of State, Charlotte Field, preparing for a presidential run, and Rogen plays liberal firebrand journalist Fred Flarsky, who grew up next door to Field. When Flarsky loses his job, Field recruits him to punch up her speeches as she embarks on a global tour to roll out an ambitious new green initiative.
Though there’s no denying the seeming odd couple pairing on the surface, the film that Long Shot most closely resembles is The American President. Set in a cynical, modern world, this film yearns for the prevalence of an old-fashioned love story. Where Michael Douglas was a liberal’s ideal President (smart, charismatic and handsome), Theron’s Secretary Field is his equivalent, though the film doesn’t ignore the unfair standards to which female politicians are held. Long Shot doesn’t share that film’s romantic view of politics, but it does capture the innately human romance at the center of its political story. The film was written by Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah, the former the man behind Rogen’s North Korea spoof The Interview, and the latter the originator of Steven Spielberg’s The Post.
Long Shot’s approach to politics is a mixture of the two, with the smart but broad satire of Sterling’s previous work and the reverence for the potential good in our institutions in Hannah’s. It’s a perfect cocktail for our current political moment that is relevant without immediately dating itself. For example, Field is running for President because the sitting President (Bob Odenkirk) wants to get into movies, after having played the president on TV (his characterization is more of a laidback, checked out Bush 43 parody, but the Trump parallel is palpable); and ever present in the story is a slimy Steve Bannon-looking, Rupert Murdoch analogue played by Andy Serkis.
What grounds the film is the wonderful chemistry between its stars. Rogen doesn’t hold back on the humor, but he plays the film’s quiet, intimate moments with the same depth he showcased in Steve Jobs. Theron similarly plays to her underutilized strengths, especially in more broadly comedic scenes, though she also shines balancing the private and public faces of her character, and the political implications of every choice she makes. Their pairing feels natural, just as Douglas and Annette Benning made for a perfect pair, though there’s certainly more off the wall energy here.
The American President is one of my all-time favorite films, and I don’t wish to do Long Shot the disservice of complimenting it only through the lens of favorable comparisons, but one thing both films get right is each one’s most crucial element: the politics and romance compliment each other. Though falling in love may complicate their lives professionally, our protagonists rediscover the better, truer versions of themselves by coming together. It’s not a statement about compromise, but rather about the human truth of empathy.
I suppose all romantic comedies are about love (hopefully) conquering all; however, with the current political landscape as its backdrop, Long Shot feels like an outlier for championing compassion. It may be an old fashioned notion that our better qualities make the world a better place, but it’s true. Long Shot isn’t trying to be a lofty, prosaic balm that will cure society’s ills, and that’s why it works. It’s a story about people who remind us not that the impossible can happen, but that embracing who we are makes anything possible.
P.S. After reading over this review, I want to make sure I give the right impression of this film. It’s more a Seth Rogen comedy than it is The American President, so there are plenty of F-bombs, drugs, and dick jokes. The emotional and thematic similarities are what spoke to me and drove my review, but the film works equally well as a Rogen comedy as it does as a political romantic one. It’s got a Frank Capra heart beneath its Veep veneer, and that Long Shot melds the two together without sacrificing anything from either side is what makes the film so singularly enjoyable.