(Charlize
Theron & Seth Rogen)
Can you imagine Charlize Theron and Seth
Rogen linking up in this world? Really? For many, it would be a consummation
devoutly to be avoided. Still, this is Hollywood ... (Review by Patrick Compton
7/10)
If you can conceive of the exquisite
Charlize Theron, late of Benoni, playing US Secretary of State and appointing
Seth Rogan as her speechwriter because she was his babysitter many years before,
then your ability to suspend disbelief is a whole lot better than mine.
Maybe I wasn’t in the mood, but right from
the first scene I simply couldn’t even pretend to believe what I was seeing on
the screen, despite being amused by the frequently raunchy goings-on.
Rogen plays Fred Flarsky, a bearded, roly-poly
radical reporter in a windcheater and a baseball cap who doesn’t mind throwing
in a few dozen expletives in his muck-raking stories for a leftie newspaper. We
first meet him trying to infiltrate a neo-Nazi group, not altogether
successfully. Later, he walks out of his job when he learns it’s been sold to a
Rupert Murdoch-like scumbag.
Theron, on the other hand, is the
president’s right-hand gal, Charlotte Field. When she discovers that her boss
has ambitions in the world of TV and plans to quit, this impossibly glamorous,
elegant and ambitious woman walks a rocky road as she prepares to become the
first female US president.
One of the movie’s satirical strengths is
that it exposes the lengths that women in the public eye must go to seem not
only cool and confident, but also successful. This allows Theron to work in a
certain vulnerability within the movie’s feminist underpinning.
The film’s setup is that Field not only
appoints Flarsky as her speech writer, but also that she succumbs to his whacky
charms despite the attentions of a handsome Canadian prime minister in the
Trudeau mould.
The film’s success has little to do with
its political edge, but rather with the two leads who, against all the odds,
manage to successfully run with their characters and create some kind of
chemistry, though not, one has to admit, of the amorous kind. Here, Theron is
first among equals, once again showing what a multi-talented actress she is, as
comfortable working in romantic comedies as she is in dramas, fantasy
adventures and thrillers.
O’Shea Jackson and June Raphael are the
most eye-catching actors in the minor roles, the former as Flarsky’s black
buddy and the latter as part of Field’s management team.
My problem with this film is that Liz
Hannah and Dan Sterling’s script rarely pretends to connect to the world we
live in, while the ending, even for Hollywood, stretches veracity to ridiculous
lengths.
Long
Shot is showing in multiple Durban cinemas. –
Patrick Compton
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