Tag Archives: Something About Mary

Long Shot

3 May

‘Long Shot’: She’s testing a run for president, he’s that strange bedfellow you hear about

 

By Tom Meek

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Without Charlize Theron, “Long Shot” would likely have no shot. The capable and statuesque actress has time and time again demonstrated her versatility, bouncing seamlessly from action (“Atomic Blonde”and “Mad Max: Fury Road”) to comedy (“Young Adult”) and of course, dark drama, namely playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in “Monster” (2003), for which she won Oscar gold. Here she’s in rom-com mode as Secretary of State Charlotte Field looking to push a green initiative worldwide and launch a run for the Oval Office.

Before you say Hillary Clinton, “Long Shot” is set against a different political climate than the one we find ourselves in today – not that it doesn’t parody and poke at it. In this parallel political universe, the sitting president (Bob Odenkirk) is a former actor who has let it quietly be known he isn’t going to seek reelection because he’s got a series (Netflix, Amazon?), which triggers Field’s ambition. Along her test-the-waters tour there’s an early stop at a swanky Manhattan cocktail party where Boyz II Men happen to be the centerpiece of the all-white event. It’s there in the haughty suffocating stuffiness that she recognizes Seth Rogen’s Fred Flarsky, not because he’s in an electric blue windbreaker at a black tie event – one of many long running gags that goes on perhaps a bit too long – but because she babysat him when he was in his pre-teens, ending in an awkward moment when the young Flarsky winds up sporting a very visible erection.

Yes, that’s how “Long Shot” rolls. The script by Liz Hannah and Dan Sterling has the uproarious irreverence of “Something About Mary” (1998) and some sharp political spoofs too, especially Andy Serkis as the Rupert Murdoch-styled tycoon who just fired Flarsky’s ultra critical journalist (penning pieces such as “Why the Two-Party System Can Suck a Dick”) or Alexander Skarsgård as the Justin Trudeau-esque Canadian prime minister being pushed by handlers, the diplomatically community at large and the press on Charlotte as a romantic possibility.The saucy send-ups of Fox News and CNN are bitingly hysterical, and sadly spot-on.

Plot-wise, Flarsky gets brought aboard as Charlotte’s speechwriter, and romantic seeds begin to take hold along a trip through Europe. That’s also when “Long Shot” becomes its least effective. Theron registers her best when Charlotte’s charming a room with her confidence and style or talking about the limitations of being a woman in politics: “If I am angry, I’m hysterical. If I raise my voice, I’m a bitch.” Not enough can be said about Theron’s presence and poise, and director Jonathan Levine seems to be well aware of the fact, as nearly every frame hangs from his star’s gravitational pull. Comedy star June Diane Raphael adds to the potpourri, playing it straight and sassy as Charlotte’s senior staffer, but the real big winner in this Theron tour de force (as well as carrying the film, she’s also devilishly funny) is O’Shea Jackson Jr., so good in “Straight Outta Compton” (2015, where he played his father, Ice Cube) and “Ingrid Goes West” (2017), and even more scene-grabbing here as Flasky’s bestie, a closeted GOP pragmatist. For O’Shea the future should be rife with opportunity, for Theron, there are no limits.

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Green Book

22 Nov

‘Green Book’: Tour through segregated South drives a buddy movie that follows a true tale

 

By Tom Meek 
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Peter Farrelly, best known as half of the brother tandem who made “Dumb and Dumber” (1994) and the chaotically uproarious “There’s Something About Mary” (1998), pulls something of an unexpected about face with “Green Book,” real-life saga about a white man chauffeuring a black man through the Deep South during the early 1960s.

The boss is Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali, a deserving Oscar winner for his work in “Moonlight”), a renowned jazz pianist tired of playing the Upper East Side who decides to take his talents south – in part to see the world, and also to make the world see him. His driver, a Bronx-bred Italian-American name Frank Anthony Vallelonga, aka Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen). Tony is something akin to Robert De Niro’s fat Jake LaMotta – boy can he eat, he’s not one to take too much shit and he’s got a mouth. It’s “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989) in reverse in so many ways, with its racist backdrop still far too similar to what pervades our country now. Once difference is that the current “green book” is an app with historical insights; from 1936 to 1966, it was a vital guide to safe spots in the segregated South.

For the most part, the film’s a buddy bonding road movie, as the aloof intellectual and motor-mouthed lout with a heart of gold break down cultural and personal barriers. At its best, Tony doesn’t judge Don Shirley after bailing him out of several compromising and potentially explosive situations where the jazz pianist dips into the bottle too much and wanders outside the lines. At its worst, Tony lectures Shirley about “his people,” Motown stars the classical musician hasn’t heard (Little Richard and Aretha) and the virtues of fried chicken – a cringeworthy scene, if just for the risky proximity of grease to a neatly pressed white shirt. 

Farrelly lays it on a bit at times where films such as “Hidden Figures” (2016) “Miss Daisy” and “The Butler” (2013) respectfully observe and allow character and history to make points on their own terms. His actors, though, do a great job selling it, and forge a genuine chemistry, despite such overwrought handling – Ali welling with dignified resolve and Mortensen adding a ton of weight and tackling new emotional territory with a screwball sense of humor. Shirley has to stay in seedier hotels and can’t use the same restroom as white people, even though he’s the allegedly well-respected main attraction. Ultimately there’s the big end-of-tour performance in Birmingham at a white-glove country club (where Nat King Cole was once assaulted). The maitre’d, trying to appeal to Tony, explains that when the world champion Boston Celtics came to town, “even the big one didn’t get to eat in the club” after polite use of such phrases as “it’s a tradition” and “that’s how we do things down here.” Sign of the times, and one not to be forgotten.

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