Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen mix raunch and romance in Long Shot: EW review

Not that there’s a ton of competition, but Long Shot may be the most deliriously raunchy comedy with a pivotal semen gag since There’s Something About Mary. Spiked with enough timely media/politics jabs to make it more than just another disposable beauty-and-the-beast gross-out rom-com, the film stars Seth Rogen as a muckraking lefty reporter whose apoplectic idealism gets him canned by his paper’s crass new billionaire owner. Then, at a ritzy fundraiser, he bumps into his former childhood babysitter (Charlize Theron), who’s grown up to become the joyless Secretary of State. They catch up, he’s reminded of why he hasn’t stopped thinking about her since he was 12, and she hires him as a speechwriter to make her seem looser and funnier in her bid to become the first female president. Yup, that old story.

The characters are as thin as parchment: she’s flawless and driven; he’s a shlubby, stoner Fred Flintstone in cargo pants. You’d never buy them together outside of the King of Queens-verse. Fortunately, Rogen and Theron’s chemistry is as fizzy as a Red Bull-and-Champagne cocktail. It doesn’t hurt that each comes with a hilarious sidekick (O’Shea Jackson Jr. and June Diane Raphael) or that Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah’s script fires off profane punchlines at a furious clip. As the two circle the globe on a diplomatic tour, they bicker, banter, dodge terrorists, trip balls on molly, and, of course, fall in love. While the undercooked second half (where things get serious, relatively speaking) can’t match the wild, exuberant insanity of the first, it’s hard to grouse when Rogen and Theron have delivered one of the most outrageous adult comedies in a long time. B

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