Review of Long Shot, directed by Jonathan Levine

There are many days the past few months where I’ve just felt like sitting in bed and rotting, but force myself to get up and do work anyways.

I think it’s because of burnout, as I’ve been working multiple jobs on top of graduate school and an internship, so when I feel like doing nothing, I do nothing for a tiny bit before moving onto the next thing.

But when I get like this and need to do some work, I find myself often putting on a movie to play in the background, as I find that helps me get motivated to do my work.

Typically these can’t be movies you have to pay a ton of attention to, but I often end up paying attention anyways mainly instead of my work. Long Shot was something I had never heard of before, but the synopsis seemed digestible enough that I wouldn’t be scratching my head while trying to multitask and do my work.

It’s a pretty straightforward movie if we’re going to be honest.

I’ve rambled enough—let’s get into the review.

What seems like a long romantic shot in a crush from the past can suddenly come alive again.

The movie opens with the fictional U.S. Secretary of State, Charlotte Field. She’s meeting with the President of the United States, who has disclosed to her that he will not be seeking reelection for a second term, as he wants to go back into Hollywood and become a movie actor.

He previously was a television actor, but sees the chance to switch into the film industry now that he has the fame of the presidency behind him. Charlotte realizes this might be her chance to run for president, and she tells him he should endorse her as a candidate.

In New York City, journalist Fred breaks into a white supremacist party, and after getting found out as a journalist, jumps out the window with the scoop. The next day, he goes to work and realizes his work has been bought out by a media mogul that doesn’t believe politically in the same things as Fred.

He quits on the spot due to this, then fails to find another job. But when his friend Lance takes him to a fundraising event, he runs into Charlotte and realizes she’s his super hot babysitter he had a crush on all those years ago.

The two of them end of talking after they realize who they are, and Fred confronts the media mogul who bought out his company, making a major scene in front of all of these “important” people and falls down the stairs.

Charlotte uses this as an opportunity to hire Fred as her speechwriter, and when she realizes, at an important summit in Sweden, she can’t say some of the things he wrote, it leads to friction. She goes with his speech and the people love it.

They continue spending time together, and it crosses the professional boundaries. They officially start dating after a revolution in the Philippines, and despite the warnings the public would never agree to this, they end up continuing.

After taking some ecstasy, Charlotte ends up doing something miraculous, freeing something hostages and winning her more approval. However, the President gets mad at her and ends up blackmailing them both with hacked webcam footage. Charlotte and Fred break up.

Fred goes back to Lance, who tells him he’s a Republican and Christian. They have a heart to heart where Lance tells Fred he needs to be open to other people’s ideas and not just stubbornly assert his own, which makes Fred see the light of what Charlotte has been doing.

Charlotte announces her 2020 bid for the presidency and reveals the blackmail, the two reunite, and the public supports their relationship. The film ends with them married and Charlotte becoming president.

Overall Thoughts

This honestly is a really dumb movie that relies on you to be of a certain background/perspective to find it funny—i.e. if you learn conservative you’re not going to like this movie at all.

While the jokes felt kind of cheap in this regard, feeding more into the moment that they’re coming from rather than being something that could stand on their own, I felt like this was a solid piece of mindless entertainment.

You can’t think too hard about it or you’re going to get frustrated, so I prefer to just not think too hard about these kind of movies right now.

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