Jonathan Levine – Memphis Flyer

Seth Rogan and Charlize Theron in Long Shot

Long Shot is a new film starring Seth Rogan and Charlize Ther…

ALL HAIL IMPERATOR FURIOSA, WARRIOR OF THE WASTELAND, CONQUERER OF THE CITADEL!

I’m sorry. That happens sometimes when I try to talk about Charlize Theron. She is one of our greatest living screen actors, with dozens of film credits and an Academy Award she earned for playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster. But for many cinephiles, she is now indelibly associated with her role in Mad Max: Fury Road, where she stole the show from the title character of George Miller’s 2015 masterpiece.

Furiosa is an icon of female power, and liberation from the patriarchy. In Long Shot, Theron plays Charlotte Field, the blisteringly competent Secretary of State under President Chambers (Bob Odenkirk) who is blisteringly stupid.

Before we continue drooling over Furiosa, I want to praise Odenkirk, director Jonathan Levine, and writers Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah. Long Shot is a romantic comedy, but its setting is contemporary American politics, which is a bloody minefield. The overwhelming presence of the orange criminal in the White House threatens to crowd out any comedy potential. And yet, he must be acknowledged in some way. Chambers is clearly not Trump, but Odenkirk plays him as a distracted, incompetent, and thoroughly corrupt rube, because portraying the president as a reasonably competent patriot would simply be unbelievable in 2019. That’s where we are as a nation.

Anyway, Charlotte is a Hillary-esque figure trying her best to put together an international agreement to curb climate change. She’s also in the midst of putting together a run for the presidency herself, assisted by Maggie Millikin (June Diane Raphael) and Tom (Ravi Patel), her fiercely loyal aides.

Meanwhile, Seth Rogan plays Fred Flarksy, a crusading investigative journalist whom we meet in the middle of a farcical attempt to infiltrate a group of neo-Nazis. Fred finds out his newspaper is being bought by Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis), a Rupert Murdoch stand-in who will stymie Flarsky’s truth seeking. Fred quits in a rage, and his rich friend Lance (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.) takes him to a ritzy party to help him forget his troubles. There, he sees Charlotte, who he remembers used to babysit him when she was a hyper-responsible pre-teen and he was even more awkward than he is now.

‘They’re called fingers, but have you ever seen them, like, fing?’

The party scene, which is long and complex and ends in horrible (read: hilarious) humiliation for Fred, is a joy. It’s a fine piece of comedy writing, well-staged by the director and effortlessly executed by the cast, that seamlessly integrates the personal and political. When the dust clears, Fred has a new job as a speech writer for Charlotte, and a new, very unlikely romance is brewing—a “long shot”, if you will.

Is there any more tired cliche than the perfect woman romantically paired with a schlubby guy? From Married With Children to The Simpsons, it’s been pretty much the norm on TV sitcoms for decades. And yet, somehow, we come out believing that the guy who wrote an article called “The Two Party System Can Suck A Dick (Actually Two Dicks)” could get it on with the Secretary of State. Theron and Rogan present the ideal avatars of the stereotypes as they fall in love during the film’s globe-hopping middle acts. Rogan’s got the comedy chops to spare, and Theron…

HAIL IMPERATOR FURIOSA!

…Theron is an effective straight woman. Director Levine wisely doesn’t saddle her with schtick, but uses her acting skills strategically. In one rollicking sequence, Theron gets laughs with a realistic impression of a partier rolling on MDMA. She doesn’t go big and mug for the camera (that’s Rogan’s job) she just delivers the lines while low-key trying to keep it together. The implied joke that maybe negotiations between politicians would go better if one or both parties were on drugs that enhanced their empathy lands naturally.

The way Long Shot differentiates itself from the sexist sitcom cliche is by exploring the difficulty men have in ceding power to women, even if—perhaps especially if—the women are clearly more skilled and intelligent. Frank thinks he’s woke as he can get, but time and again he runs up against his own self-righteousness and unexamined assumptions. As the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl rom-com cycle plays out, he’s just trying to hang on as she is making the kind of career-over-home decisions that a male character would be saddled with in earlier decades. By the time the When Harry Met Sally-inspired denouement rolls around, the couple have found a unique equilibrium that they are still trying to understand. Maybe that’s the portrait of all successful relationships that the romantic comedy, when done right, points us towards.

Long Shot

Back in the days when I was a teenager

Before I had status and before I had a pager

You could find the Abstract listenin’ to hip-hop

My pops used to say it reminded him of bebop.

— “Excursions,” A Tribe Called Quest

It’s the summer of 1994. New York City private-school teenager and pot dealer Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) has a pager, all right, but he sure doesn’t have any status. He doesn’t have any friends, either — his only confidant is his psychiatrist and client, Dr. Jeff Squires (Ben Kingsley). Luke is cute and intelligent, but his thoughtfulness often looks and sounds like stoned slowness. He’s never had a girlfriend, although something may be brewing with Dr. Squires’ stepdaughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby).

Like a lot of urban-suburban white kids, Luke is more lonesome than depressed, and he combats his loneliness by immersing himself in hip-hop — the great 1990s hip-hop of the Native Tongues movement, Biggie Smalls, and the Wu-Tang Clan. Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness is much more than a pitch-perfect time capsule; it’s a coming-of-age story that’s preternaturally wise about music, sex, and teenagers.

Initially, Luke’s road to maturity and wisdom is hard to follow because Dr. Squires is such a strange, shifting guide, one who’s barely beyond adolescence in his own emotional development. Plus, Luke and Squires’ path is heavily strewn with 1990s signposts and gestures: Writing phone numbers on paper (rather than punching them into cell phones), grumbling about douche-bag mayor Rudy Giuliani, snorting Ritalin, and walking past Kurt Cobain memorials, Forrest Gump posters, Mary-Kate Olsen (only here she’s all grown up), and the World Trade Center are all part of Levine’s pop-cultural diorama.

These references aren’t held up for ridicule or cheap sentiment; they perform the same necessary function as the cigarette-smoking and three-martini lunches do in the terrific TV series Mad Men. They capture the mystery and fragility of the recent past.

The use of music throughout The Wackness — songs like Nas’ “The World Is Yours,” Raekwon’s “Heaven and Hell”, the Notorious B.I.G.’s “The What,” and, best of all, a Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It” — is also enlightening rather than nostalgic. What’s most amazing about these superbly chosen hip-hop tracks is the now-unmistakable air of tragedy and loss they all share. In a beautiful shift and stretch, though, the film’s romantic pinnacle turns on a visual cue to an ’80s song: After his first kiss, the concrete blocks under Luke’s feet light up à la Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video.

But as great as his musical allusions are, Levine’s handling of adolescent sex, shown through scenes that are tender and erotic without tumbling into exploitive jailbait fantasies, is even better. Stephanie is compassionate and understanding about the mechanics and (male) malfunctions of sex, but she’s not at all willing to deal with the messier emotional aftershocks. Her response to Luke’s declaration of love is a sudden, harsh “Whoa, dude.” It’s a tribute to The Wackness that Stephanie’s response is not portrayed as a condemnation of teenage girls. Like so much in this movie, it turns out to be strangely sweet and right.

The Wackness

Opening Friday, August 1st

Multiple locations