Long Shot

The movies love a 'beauty and the slob' story. Whether it’s Bill Murray wowing Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters or Jason Segel ending up with Mila Kunis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the schlub always gets the girl in Hollywood. It’s the same story in Long Shot, where Charlize Theron’s Charlotte – the ambitious, talented US Secretary of State – inexplicably falls for Seth Rogen’s Fred, a rabble-rousing journalist in a teal shellsuit.

We’re told Fred is a funny writer, but there’s little evidence of that on screen: “The two-party system can suck a dick” is the headline to one of the supposedly witty and insightful articles that convinces Charlotte to hire him to punch up her political speeches with some fratboy zingers. It’s regrettable that someone wasn't hired to do something similar with Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah's lazy script, which gets by on lame cultural references (Game of Thrones, The Avengers and Roxette's It Must Have Been Love all get name-checked) and the odd boner joke.

The unbelievability of the central relationship and the uninspired gross-out gags (Long Shot tries to resurrect the ejaculation joke from There’s Something About Mary) are the least of the problems in Jonathan Levine’s hit-and-miss film. As well as romantic comedy, Long Shot also fancies itself a political satire, but unlike Rogen’s last film set on the political stage, the outrageous The Interview, Long Shot pulls every one of its punches.

In the world of the film, the US President is also a TV star who wanted the job to boost his ego, but in this case, that’s the worst thing you can say about him. As played by Breaking Bad’s Bob Odenkirk, this commander-and-chief looks positively presidential next to the orange crank currently in the White House. The most compelling political joke in the whole film is the suggestion that heads of state might be more empathetic if they went into tough negotiations while flying high on MDMA; it's something for Theresa May to consider.

The true villain of the piece turns out to be Parker Wembley, a Rupert Murdoch-like media mogul (played by Andy Serkis) who’s making life difficult for Charlotte as she considers running for the Presidency, which will be complicated further if her relationship with Fred becomes public. With no idea how to make Serkis's character funny, the filmmakers gave him a ridiculous wig.

Like most Hollywood comedies, it’s at the fringes where you find most of the laughs. June Diane Raphael is deliciously nasty as Charlotte's chief adviser while Alexander Skarsgård does a fine hatchet-job on Justin Trudeau, playing the Canadian Prime Minister as a creepy nerd trying to seduce Charlotte. It's a shame, too, that we didn’t get to see more of Wembley's Fox & Friends-style political show, which has the brilliant Claudia O'Doherty among the right-wing pundits. Most valuable bit-player, however, is O'Shea Jackson Jr as Rogen’s livewire best friend, who makes the most of his scant screentime. By stealing this film and 2017's Ingrid Goes West, he's surely due his own comedy vehicle sometime soon.