Mark Reviews Movies: LONG STORY SHORT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 1, 2021

Writer/director Josh Lawson's Long Story Short is a comic fantasy with a genuine sense of emotional and metaphysical weight. A man becomes trapped in a sort of flash-forward version of his own life, spending a few minutes within an isolated moment of time, before time itself jumps ahead an entire year.

The guy is fully aware of the jumps, but each new leap forward seems as if it happens in an instant. Because of the mechanics of this, there is no way to prove his situation to anyone. After all, how can you convince someone that you've traveled through time but only to the present moment.

This is, if one stops to think about it for even a moment, a pretty terrifying premise, because think of all of the things you would miss by skipping an entire year (To be fair, most of the world probably has a sense of that by now on account of 2020). Teddy (Rafe Spall), the man stuck in this time-jumping predicament, misses out on learning his wife is pregnant, witnessing the birth of his only daughter, and watching her grow up. Worse, every year finds his marriage in more dire straits, and no matter what he says or does within those several minutes of consciously existing within his own life, nothing can fix the mess he has previously created.

Lawson's entire setup for this is kind of ingeniously frightening. Teddy exists, as the guy who wakes up one morning to discover that he's a time-traveler, without any memory of what has happened in his own life between the gaps. Another Teddy exists, too, living the life of which the conscious Teddy is only catching glimpses, experiencing all of the good and bad and worse stuff, and generally messing up everything that the conscious Teddy dreams of for his life.

If this sounds a bit complicated, it's really not. The other clever part of Lawson's screenplay is that it doesn't attempt to over-explain or even give a rationale for what's happening, how this complication is happening, or why it's happening. It simply is happening. Teddy doesn't know why. He can't even comprehend what his future self is doing to muck up things so badly, because he's just a guy who's living out what feels like the day after his wedding. Teddy thinks he might be able to fix it, using the logic of another film that really has nothing to do with this situation, but as things become worse and worse, it seems as if he's just going to rush through his life, without experiencing it or learning a damn thing from it.

It is a comedy, thankfully, because the premise might have been a bit too much to take if it was played well and with the full existential gravity that could come with it. It begins as a hastened (naturally) romantic comedy, as Teddy kisses Leanne (Zahra Newman) at a New Year's party, mistaking her for his current girlfriend Becka (Dena Kaplan). The uncomfortable moment becomes more awkward (obviously), involving a nut-allergy scare but bypassing everything that would happen after the meet-cute.

Five years pass, and Teddy has proposed to Leanne. A mysterious woman (played by Noni Hazlehurst), who speaks in cryptic riddles, bumps into the couple while they visit the grave of Teddy's father. She argues that Teddy and Leanne should get married as quickly as possible, because the "later" that Teddy always looks for as an excuse could easily become "never." The woman promises him a "gift" to help him learn that lesson.

When Teddy awakens following the day of his wedding, he actually finds himself on the day of his first wedding anniversary. To his shock, Leanne is pregnant, and after a few minutes of trying to get his bearings, Teddy awakens from a nap to find himself on the day of his second wedding anniversary—and with a baby daughter.

He does catch on to the predicament quickly, but that only makes matters worse. His best friend Sam (Ronny Chieng) provides a little help, although he has no idea that his pal's problem of having life go by too quickly isn't some kind of metaphor. The whole thing is a metaphor, anyway—a gimmicky but sincere fable about how much can change without us even realizing it.

His marriage to Leanne starts dissolving each year (He's stunned to learn they've been attending couple's therapy, and it declines from there). She says it's as if he's never there for her or their daughter. That's technically true for the Teddy experiencing these glimpses of his own life, but it's apparently true for the unseen Teddy living that life—always working, ignoring Leanne, dismissing both of their shared and individual dreams.

Meanwhile, Spall's inherently charming and sympathetic performance also possesses a frantic, confounded energy that maintains the momentum of this scenario, and there's real pathos to the actor's work as Teddy starts to see his life and his loved ones move on or out without him (The filmmaker himself shows up as a new guy in Leanne's life—one of a few, including a surprisingly returning Becka, who try to teach Teddy a thing or two without realizing how important those seemingly little moments are). That performance is key: It keeps the early and mounting terror of this predicament (If it keeps going at this pace, Teddy will be dead before he knows it) at a light-enough distance, and it prevents the later seriousness from becoming too schmaltzy.

Long Story Short has a simple, easy-to-digest message about living each moment to the full and seizing the day and all that stuff. It's fun and funny, though, propulsive in both its clever premise and its sincere belief in all that other stuff.

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