Charlize Theron is a straight-laced Secretary of State in preparation to run for the U.S. presidency. She meets Seth Rogen at a party and soon remembers him as the cute little boy next door she used to babysit when she was a teenager. He’s now an (unemployed) extreme left-wing journalist, and she shortly thereafter hires him as her speechwriter. As they often do in these situations, opposites attract and things become as complicated as they do romantic.
While it sounds formulaic (and it is), Long Shot is executed with such intelligence, heart, and wonderfully timed humor by director Jonathan Levine that it makes you forget its recipe. Theron and Rogen have a shockingly unexpected and magically natural chemistry, playing off of each other with effortless humor and genuine emotion.
Astute political observations are casually dropped into the narrative, but they’re never overbearing. The screenplay (by Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah) is refreshingly open-minded towards examining a variety of viewpoints. As silly as it gets, Long Shot is an incredibly smart movie that makes subtle attempts to reach audiences with conflicting beliefs (with the exclusion of Nazis, as the film’s opening makes quite clear).
Long Shot may belong to a genre we’ve all experienced many times before, but it does so with an evolved, sincere, and spontaneous perspective that makes us feel like we’re experiencing it for the very first time.
GRADE: A
