I was in NYC this past weekend! I primarily went because I absolutely NEEDED to see Beetlejuice on Broadway, but I made sure to be there for as much of the weekend as possible (about 36 hours) so I could hang with the BFFF and maybe catch other shows. Except I didn’t wanna spend money on other shows, so I just entered a couple ticket lotteries that I did not win. So I spent about 34 of those 36 hours with the bestie. After spending a few hours at a board game cafe, we wanted to get in another activity before the big show. It was too late for a too long Avengers round 3, but really I wanted to see Long Shot. I mean c’mon, the two of us aren’t often on the same side of the country, and if there’s a new Seth Rogen movie, we gotta see it together. It’s because of a Seth Rogen movie that we say we’re BFFF’s (with that extra F). Luckily there wa showing in Times Square that we could get to after one last game and have enough time to grab a quick slice before the ‘Juice.
Charlize Theron is the current secretary of state, and she’s just earned the sitting president’s endorsement to run in 2020. Seth Rogen, is a journalist with such a strong sense of morals and ideals that he’s lost his job over it. Turns out, he and Charlize knew each other as young’uns and they reconnect under typical romcom meet cute circumstances. He takes a job as a speechwriter for her campaign, and like I said, romcom, so they fall for each other. Much hilarity ensues.
And I really do mean MUCH hilarity. The two of us were laughing nonstop at this very smartly written screenplay. For the rest of the weekend, we were exchanging quotes, but it wasn’t just the comedy that was smart. Earlier in the day we’d been talking about the very positive shift in tv and film towards showing healthy dating, and this very much continues in that movement. Okay so it’s a bit problematic that she’s his boss, but otherwise it’s a step in the right direction towards depicting a good communicative relationship. It did lean just a tad too hard into the romcom tropes, so I gotta knock off half a point, but that’s my own personal preference and general aversion to the genre.
Charlize and Seth may seem like quite the odd couple, but they worked so well. She hasn’t really been given the chance to do comedy, and she excelled at it. Each knew how to play up the other’s strengths and it gave them a genuine and unexpected chemistry. I also wanna give a shout out to O’Shea Jackson Jr, who had a small but important supporting role. He’s had the charisma to steal his scenes in the films I’ve seen him in so far, and he’s def gonna be one to watch out for going forward. Anyways yeah that’s all to say this was just another awesome part of an awesome weekend
Long Shot – \m/ \m/ \m/ \n