Sunday, 13 October 2019

It's 'Pretty Woman' but she's Richard Gere and you're Julia Roberts! (Long Shot 2019)




235.
Long Shot
 
 
7/10
 
It has been a while since I had seen a romantic comedy and if I'm honest, it's a nice change of pace from the seriousness that I have recently watched. Seth Rogan and Charlize Theron are bringing the most unlikely couple and putting the title of the movie into realisation as we are about to see these to get together. When it comes to a rom-com, there isn't too much to say as very rarely we are left unfulfilled as the two main characters always seem to get together. Let's quickly whizz through the story and find out whether it's going to be a long shot to whether we are satisfied.
We are given two characters who couldn't be further from each other. Seth plays a guy called Fred Flarsky a controversial writer for a small newspaper. Theron plays Charlotte Field, a lady whose name sounds as important as the job she is going after. She wants to be the first female president. With Fred quitting his job, he is cheered up by his mate and taken to the same party that Charlotte is attending. They bump into each other, knowing each other from their youth as she used to babysit him and knew back then that he liked her.


It has been years since then and Fred has not changed in any way, fashion sense of her nervousness around her. She offers him a job as one of her writers, thinking that he always knew her and her morals when they were in school and maybe he could do the same again after reading some of his work. She needs some new humour mixed in with the serious and this is the perfect time for a cheeky risk. One night, under attack whilst touring the countries with her environment plan, the two get closer and finally kiss. This leads to the rest and suddenly the tour turns into a physical relationship, which her other assistants find out and the stuck up cow far from approves of.
The movie shows their secret relationship taking the next step as, in their own world, they find themselves getting serious. The main assistant knows that this is never going to work out, Fred simply isn't in a place to be with her. All this time, one of the arsehole journalists or newspaper owners has been chasing an interview with Charlotte for a while now and after finding out that Fred is in the picture, they find a leaked video of him 'sorting himself out' to one of Charlotte's speeches. He is earning big money from deforestation and with Charlotte's ideas to run for president with environmental change as her big policy, she is blackmailed to drop this idea or risk the video being released. Fred is fuming as he only agreed to work with her on her policy because she knew it was a good one and was adamant that if she switched in any way to appeal to the voters, he would walk out. This is about to happen as he doesn't care about his image but with what is in stake for her, she has to take the deal.


He leaves and the two try to move on. Fred returns to his mate, finding out that his mate had been keeping the fact that he is a Christian and Republican private because he knew Fred is so narrowminded that they would argue. This could have cost his relationship with Charlotte, who has offered the hidden passage under the White House to keep him out of the public eye. After some missed calls, Charlotte tries a date with the Canadian president for publicity but he's a weird fella. I feel that something is coming and you can tell from a movie like this that the end is near. I guessed that the bitchy assistant was going to get them back together after trying for so long to keep them apart but I was wrong on that account. Instead, as Charlotte was going to give her biggest speech and turn away from her own ideas, she thought 'fuck it' and broke the news of the video going to leak, the fact that she was going to be blackmailed and ended up riding high to find Fred. Problem is that he was watching the conference live and so headed to her. Missing each other, Fred turns home to find her in the apartment with apologies and the two reconcile, heading down the gathering audience and introducing themselves as a couple, even with the bitchy one accepting the love they were getting from the crowd. The movie draws to an end as Fred gives us a tour of the White House, his painting up on the wall with the First Ladies and how happy this couple is living together.


This movie wasn't really a far cry from a lot of other movies. We had the standard meeting, break up and make up scenes that are always part and parcel, with a couple of arguments in the middle and somehow, two unlikely characters ending up in love by the end. If this wasn't the case for a rom-com, I wouldn't really know how to feel by the end, even if it is as predictable as rain in Wales. The cast was actually really compatible. We know what we are getting from Rogan and his humour but seeing Theron as a serious lady turning into a sex-pest with a night on drugs and trying to negotiate a hostage situation only gave a lot more humour to the occasion. This was definitely the best feature of the movie. At times, it did get amazingly crude and cringe, especially the video of Rogan masturbating but the slapstick humour has been seen in some of his other movies. Everything else was a little repetitive but as already mentioned, it had been a while since I have seen a rom-com so I can forgive that. I even put a tweet up about going to watch the movie with Seth Rogan given a read of the post and dropping a like! This was a true underdog story from the male perspective and I can get on board with that.

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