Long Shot was a light, frothy and entertaining rom-com, but they sure do not make rom-coms like they use do. It knows it is a rom-com but had a fear of committing totally to the genre. The film was littered with rom-com tropes but always toed the line of either going all meta and genre-parodying or breaking new ground and going against the expected.
Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen have great comedic chemistry, although their romantic chemistry was somewhat lacking. There were some really good laugh out loud moments, but they were more because of great, unexpected physical comedy by Rogen rather than smart, funny writing. The screenplay was the film's weakest link.. It was a bit too long, too uneven, too ambitious and unnecessarily political. If I wanted to watch a Trump-skewering political comedy/satire, I would watch re-runs of The Good Fight or Veep.
Rogen is a good actor, but his character felt stereotypical and repetitive. He was a walking trope but he lacked the affable, self-deprecating charisma of Hugh Grant or Tom Hanks.
Theron is gorgeous and she has good comedic timing, but her plot line is so cliched and expected that after a while it felt less exciting. Go watch Billions instead if you want something similar but smarter.
The supporting cast was great but it was such a shame that June Diane Raphael and Lisa Kudrow were so under-utilised. And why in the world did they piled on such bad makeup on JDR? Worried that she will upstaged Theron? As for the guysm Ravi Patel, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Serkis and Alexander Skarsgard were also equally funny and they were fine in their limited role; no one really stole the show from our two leads.
Long Shot was a watchable film. I doubt it will be a part of the pantheon of memorable Hollywood rom-coms, but it was a good bit of distraction and counter-programming for -Avengers: Endgame.
