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What a tragic disappointment. After a promising opening ten minutes featuring gags that, if not truly edgy, at least carry a little bite, the superficially progressive RomCom Long Shot proceeds inexorably towards complete mainstream commercial formulaic filmmaking. The first hint that things aren’t going to stay cool is the score, which blandly announces itself as cosy and familiar as your grandmother’s lap blanket; it’s awful. Next come the interior logic and character consistency casualties, indicative of a sloppy script and a slack edit or, worse, studio notes. Finally, the tropes, the tropes, the boring, predictable, endlessly clichéd tropes. It’s all the worse for watching the enormously gifted Charlize Theron, as the US secretary of state who falls for her speechwriting “gag man” (Seth Rogen), having to play these shopworn scenarios, while being shot like a fancy perfume bottle. For a film that begins with a couple of quick jabs that seem to establish the semblance of feminist credentials, it quickly succumbs to being its own idealogical enemy. The whole thing’s slide from hipness to commercial blandness is reflective of its director, Jonathan Levine’s, career, from indie-cred The Wackness (2008) and critical darling 50/50 (2011) through the dreadful Snatched (2017) and now this. What a shame.