Tag: Ravi Patel

Long Shot

After the decade plus of revitalization, comic book movies have finally given me what I have always wanted.

A live action film over the best mutant super hero ever in existence, Longshot. Longshot is an alien/cyborg futuristic dude, who deals with M.O.D.A.K. What is his mutant power? He is lucky. Things go his way. As long as he has pure motives, the hard to fathom things will just work. What a fun power!

Wait. Shit. No. This is a RomCom from the creators of Superbad. And it is Long Shot, two words, meant to show the likiehood of this couple working out. Ah damn it. If this film stays popular over time, we might never get a self titled Longshot movie now!


They say couples will start to dress like each other. Just a guess on which way it goes.

Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) is a goddamn supernatural being. She is smart, beautiful, well liked, and currently Secretary of State behind an actor president. She isn’t super funny though, and she isn’t in a relationship. These are negatives on her profile, a profile she wants to improve while planning to run for president.
Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) is a journalist that doesn’t work for a major media company. He hates that stuff. He is funny, and edgy, and has his own unique voice. But after he quits in protest, his friend (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) uses his connections to get him into a rich party. And that is where Fred and Charlotte meet for the first time…in a few decades. Oh they were neighbors as kids, she was his babysitter, only older by about 3 years. He loved her and she was (and still is) out of his league.
But driven by nostalgia, and a lot of good vibes, she wants Fred to be his staff writer, to raise up her humor levels. Staff sees it as a bad idea, but she just sees something in him. And maybe, this run for president and bills will draw them closer together in ways no one would have guessed. Just kidding, that isn’t a maybe at all.

Also starring June Diane Raphael, Bob Odenkirk, Alexander Skarsgård, Randall Park, Andy Serkis, Ravi Patel, and Tristan D. Lalla.


They say couples will start to dress like each other. Just a guess on which way it goes.

Look, I know I haven’t had at on of reviews over the last few months. I rarely review those I see at WorldFest, and I haven’t been to as many screeners lately. Random documentaries or movies I find on Netflix/Hulu can sometimes be worth the watch, but can also be often times easy to ignore for reviews.

But I am really glad I have now seen Long Shot. I can’t even tell you what I was expecting. It is a RomCom after all, with a strange pair of leads. And it had me smiling so much, and laughing quite often. Maybe this isn’t actually a 4 out of 4 film! Maybe it just is given that rating because of a hole this film has seemingly filled in my heart. And hey, that can happen with reviews, as much as we would rather it not. Sometimes our real life just interferes with a movie, so we can’t see how it truly is, which leads to good and bad ratings.

And for now? This film is one of my favorite of 2019. It might just be like Love, Simon, a really enjoyable film that stood out amongst a sea of shit, but one with less appeal by the end of the year. Rogen plays something similar to his normal self, but it works. Theron plays the anti-Tully in this movie, and her range is incredible, although this role is also probably similar to her real self. Jackson Jr. is a scene stealer and has been unstoppable in his films lately by always making a great impact with smaller roles.

This movie won’t change the world, and it doesn’t really even do something profound. But I love it.

4 out of 4.

Meet The Patels

I first heard about Meet The Patels months ago, and that is because an alumnus from my High School was the director! Now, she went there 14 years before me or so, but it was still cool. We got quite a few newsletters letting us know it was going to theaters and eventually Netflix.

Despite the connection though, I won’t be biased favorable for it. If anything, I might be biased against it. Because despite our school connection and being a member of the press, they wouldn’t give me a press screening to watch the film. What a bunch of jerks.

Patel is apparently a very popular Indian last name. Our story is about Ravi Patel, who is about to turn 30 and is currently unmarried. Unmarried and Indian! At that age! Oh no! His parents were part of an arranged marriage of course, after his dad had already moved to India. His wife was the 12th match and they knew it would work. And the mom is also quite good at arranging marriages, so it looks bad that her son hasn’t even had a girlfriend in 30 years!

But…but Ravi has had a girlfriend. He was dating a white ginger chick for two whole years without his family knowing about it. But he had an “Indian” problem and some commitment issues, so they ended it right before the documentary. The “Indian” problem is that he has always pictured himself marrying an Indian woman and knows it is what his family wants.

So he goes to his parents and agrees for them to work on arranging a marriage for him.

Family
A photo of them taking a photo! Madness.

Now, arranged marriages aren’t like they used to be. The parents had to print out a bio sheet on their son and send it all around the country to friends and family, all of which passed it on. At the same time, the parents began to receive information on ladies across America. They sort through the ladies and give him women they think he will enjoy. He just has to go on a date with the woman and they decide on their own if they want to date any more in the future. If not, the parents keep trying and keep hooking them up with company.

And Ravi’s sister, Geeta, is there the whole time to document and film the whole thing. Weddings, Indian dating sites, and speed dating at Patel reunions. No it’s no weird. Basically everyone is a Patel, and most Patel’s just marry other Patel’s from different parts of India.

As a documentary, this story is about Ravi, but he isn’t really an interesting character. What makes the documentary interesting is learning about modern Indian American dating customs. The levels the parents go through to provide for their children. That is what an average viewer will appreciate about this documentary.

Ravi’s story on its own is…well, predictable. If you know how stories work, you can probably figure out how this thing will end already. I hope it was actually a real story and not a scheme done by the brother/sister to make it seem like a better story. But who can really say?

Meet The Patels is the type of documentary you might want to put on while working on other projects, not bothering to pause it if you need to run to the water closet. An average story about average people, with some nice culture aspects occasionally thrown in.

2 out of 4.