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Take a chance

Twenty four years ago, The American President came out, a cutesy romantic comedy starring Michael Douglas as a Bill Clinton-like President and Annette Bening as the lady he wants to date. America swooned, but I threw up. I hated that piece of shit.

Now, in the Trump era, we get Long Shot, a different twist on a high profile politician dating a commoner. This time out, Charlize Theron stars as Charlotte Field, Secretary of State and potential Presidential candidate. Her eventual romantic interest is Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen), a journalist turned speech writer who, not surprisingly, smokes lots of weed.

Long Shot is better than The American President. It’s a lot better than The American President.

Flarsky is a dweeby, wind breaker-wearing columnist whose alternative weekly newspaper is sold to a conservative media mogul (an unrecognizable Andy Serkis). He quits his job and finds himself attending a high society party featuring Charlotte and Boyz 2 Men along with best pal, Lance (O’Shea Jackson, Jr., showing he’s a lot funnier than his reasonably funny dad, Ice Cube).

Turns out Fred knows Charlotte. She was a neighbor when he was a kid, and she, being three years older, babysat him. They get reacquainted, Fred gets a job as her speech writer, one thing leads to another, and there you have it, one of this year’s most unlikely rom-com pairings. It’s also a pairing that works swimmingly because Theron and Rogen have serious screen chemistry.

Now, before you go squawking that a woman of Theron’s caliber would never date a Rogen in real life, I’d like to point out that Theron seriously dated the scrunchy faced Sean Penn. Seth Rogen kicks Sean Penn’s ass in many categories, including looks in my humble opinion—just saying.

Whatever you think of this pairing before you see the movie, Theron and Rogen pull it off. Their courtship is funny, awkward, comedically drug-laced and utterly convincing. There are many fantasy elements to this movie, but most of those play out on the political side. As for the romance part, that’s the most realistic thing happening in this film. Charlotte likes to party, and much of the Fred part is modeled after Rogen, and Rogen is the king of partying. It’s a good match.

The political stuff is hyper-satire, with Bob Odenkirk scoring big points as the former TV star turned President who won’t be seeking reelection because he wants to make the big leap into film. (He idolizes Woody Harrelson. Oh, were this the case in 2020, what a wonderful world this would be.)

Long Shot is directed by real life Rogen buddy Jonathan Levine. (The two worked together on 50/50 and The Night Before.) Levine proves to be the right choice to pull off the wacky screenplay by Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah, a script that gives equal time to environmental issues and accidentally jacking off into one’s beard (a moment in this film that’s reminiscent of There’s Something About Mary). It’s a daring script that takes chances, like a nuclear bomb thriller where the bombs actually go off. Not all of the jokes hit the mark, but enough do.

Theron is one of the greatest living actresses at work today, and, as it turns out, she’s also one of the funniest. (See her guest spot on Arrested Development for further evidence.) She’s actually funnier than Rogen in this movie. That’s not a dig on Rogen; he’s funny, but Theron wins the funny war in Long Shot. As for Jackson, Jr., his Lance deserves his own spinoff movie.

At press time, Long Shot got its clock cleaned at the box office by a little movie called Avengers: Endgame in its second weekend. Looks like America isn’t buying in on Theron and Rogen making out while high on molly. Whatever.

If you are skipping because you think the pairing looks ridiculous, know that it’s a ridiculous movie, with the pairing being the least ridiculous thing about it. They are a good screen couple. I hope they work together again, and I hope Long Shot finds life in the future on streaming platforms. Ω

“Guess how many days since we last showered?”

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4Avengers: Endgame The Marvel universe gets its most grandiose chapter with Avengers: Endgame, a fitting successor to last year’s Infinity War and a generous gift to those of us who like our movies with superheroes in them. When last we saw Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), he was a survivor of the dreaded Thanos (Josh Brolin) finger snap, a universe altering occurrence that took out half its living creatures and provided for that tear-jerking moment when Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and many others turned to dust. Endgame picks up where that action left off, with Stark floating in space and keeping a video journal of his inevitable demise having run out of food and water. Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) are among the other survivors, dealing with the repercussions of so much death on Earth, just like Justin Theroux in The Leftovers. Oh, there are tons of questions this movie needs to answer in its three-hourplus running time. Where’s Thanos? Where’s Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)? Is Tony permanently marooned in space? What’s been going on with Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) during all of this Thanos hullabaloo? Is everybody really dead? Does Star Lord (Chris Pratt) still have his Walkman in the Great Beyond? Good news: the movie answers many of your questions and more thanks to another well-balanced screenplay and a crack directorial job from the team of Anthony and Joe Russo. When you leave Endgame, your belly will be happily full of cinematic satisfaction.

1Dumbo The decline of Tim Burton continues with Dumbo, his wasteful remake of the classic animated movie that amounts to a big nothing, for kids and adults alike. The original Dumbo clocked in at just over an hour, while this one lasts for nearly two hours that feel like 40. Yes, the running time has been padded, but not with anything that registers as beneficial. A bunch of unnecessary subplots and added characters take away time from the title character, an admittedly cute CGI achievement. There are no talking animals in this movie, so scratch Timothy the mouse, the singing crows and the lullaby from Mama elephant off your list of expectations. The mouse—who makes a brief appearance as a caged mouse wearing a hat—is replaced by the requisite precocious children, one of them played by Thandie Newton’s daughter. Sorry, Thandie Newton’s daughter, but you can’t act. Colin Farrell appears as Holt, the precocious children’s dad, back from World War I with one arm, and his wife died of the flu while traveling with the circus. The circus is led by Max Medici (a blustery Danny DeVito), who has purchased a cheap, pregnant elephant. He wants Holt to be the keeper of his elephants, a comedown from his previous gig as a circus cowboy. Farrell, like most of the humans in this movie, seems lost. V.A. Vandevere, the villain of the film, played by Michael Keaton, purchases Dumbo and plans to make him a main attraction at his Dreamland, which has a strong resemblance to Disneyland. So, in a way, Vandevere is modeled after Walt Disney and is portrayed as an evil megalomaniac. So, in essence, Burton gets away with indirectly portraying Walt Disney as a bit of a greedy monster. I’m not saying this is anything inaccurate, but it’s a little odd to see in an actual Disney movie.

3Extremely Wicked, Shocking Evil and Vile Director Joe Berlinger is no stranger to dark subjects. He directed the documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, a movie that arguably helped release three innocent men from prison. Earlier this year, he directed Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, a four-part documentary series on the infamous serial killer. Now comes this, a narrative film about Bundy’s life, focusing on the years in which he was killing women while having a relationship with Liz Kendall (Lily Collins), a single parent he met in a bar. Zac Effron steps into the role of Bundy in a way that is downright frightening. As it turns out, if you mess with Effron’s hair a bit, he’s a dead ringer for Bundy, but his work here goes well beyond physical resemblance. There was plenty of footage of Bundy for Effron to study. (His murder trial was televised, a first in American history.) And Effron definitely captures Bundy’s creepy, deceptive charisma. Berlinger’s film focuses on the charms that fooled some who knew Bundy, a mostly affable, cheerful guy in the public eye. There was something supremely evil boiling behind his movie star eyes, and Berlinger opts for a film that mostly avoids his depraved deeds in favor of examining his life away from the murders. It’s a risky approach that mostly works, risky in that Berlinger could be accused of romanticizing Bundy with the casting of Effron and the lack of carnage in the movie. This movie is far from romantic, and those watching it probably know what a sick man Bundy was. This is a horror story, but one that favors creeping terror over massive bloodletting. Berlinger covered the details of Bundy’s crimes (using Bundy’s own words) in the documentary. (Streaming on Netflix during a limited theatrical release.)

1Hellboy A Hellboy movie without director Guillermo del Toro proves to be a very unfortunate thing with Hellboy, the third movie based on the classic Dark Horse comic. This isn’t a sequel. It’s a reboot, and a cheap-assed, sloppy reboot at that. David Harbour steps in for Ron Perlman to play the title role, while Neil Marshall (The Descent) haphazardly directs in place of Guillermo del Toro. While Harbour (Stranger Things) is OK in the role, he does little to distinguish himself, basically doing some lightweight riffing on a character Perlman established. He’s a lot like Perlman, but he’s not as good as Perlman. Gone is the richness and depth of del Toro’s world, replaced by choppy CGI, unimpressive makeup and messy editing. The movie is just one lackluster action sequence after another, strung together with slow dialogue scenes that do nothing to make the film feel coherent. The movie starts off on a goofy note, with Hellboy in a wrestling match with his former partner turned vampire. That sounds stupid, and it is, giving the film a silly note to start on as the narrative jumps from vampire-slaying to giant-hunting. Hellboy battles giants, who are represented with the aforementioned choppy CGI. Marshall apparently got the go ahead to incorporate a lot of gore, and the movie has a lot of blood, to the point where it has a numbing effect. It’s totally void of fun.

3Shazam! The DC universe gets its best movie since Wonder Woman with Shazam!, a fun—and sometimes shockingly dark—blast of comic book superhero fantasy. While a little sloppy at times, the movie works thanks to its central performances and warmhearted core. Zachary Levi proves an excellent choice to play the title character, the net result of a 14-year-old boy being handed super powers by a wizard (Djimon Hounsou). That boy is Billy Batson (Asher Angel), a foster child in search of his real mom. When he yells “Shazam!” a lightning bolt blasts him in his melon, and he becomes the glorious, red-suited, white-caped superhero, albeit a superhero with a 14-year-old’s brain. This gives Levi the chance to do a Tom Hanks-inBig kind of shtick, and he’s good at it. The new Shazam, who goes by various names, including Captain Sparkle Fingers, gets coached by his superhero-obsessed sidekick and foster brother, Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer). Freddy is one of the big reasons this movie works despite its flaws. Grazer employs the same kind of whip smart line delivery that made him one of the more memorable kids running away from Pennywise.