So how do you feel about the Groundhog Day premise? Well, here’s a new spin. While it didn’t have the benefit of being better, it did have the benefit of being newer. In Long Story Short, a man keeps finding himself magically appearing in the same calendar day … but he has advanced exactly one year ahead without realizing it. Ummm, without realizing it immediately, I should say.
Having no memory of the past year is the real bitch. I could learn to advance a year of life every fifteen minutes so long as I could reflect on what happened. Teddy (Rafe Spall, the poor man’s Chris O’Dowd) has to account for what’s happened since his last anniversary … and he’s incredibly slow on the uptake. Like mind bogglingly slow. He also doesn’t trust himself, which is a serious problem. It’s one thing if you can’t trust anybody else … but not being able to trust yourself, like aggressively denying decisions you had years to make … that almost seems like a pathology.
Teddy met-cuted Leanne (Zahra Newman) on New Year’s, surprise kissing her after the countdown only to realize he had kissed the wrong girl. Oops. Do people do that? I mean, really? No matter. Leanne took it in stride, especially after Teddy needed an epipen. Later on, Teddy gets some weird YOLO warning in a graveyard, prompting Teddy and Leanne to get married. But that wasn’t good enough for the graveyard crone who cursed Teddy. No, she gives him a special “wedding gift” by which every fifteen minutes, his life advances a year and he has to figure out what specific anniversary present he’s failed to give Leanne this time.
At first, it’s all about a memory fail, but by anniversary three or four, Teddy finally cottons on that his marriage has been falling apart and he has no memory of it, which bites. It’s also a cheat. Between the anniversaries, Teddy has lived, loved and suffered. He’s been well aware of things going on and has let them 
happen. On the anniversaries, however, when we see Teddy, he’s a different guy –always frantic, never sharp, never has a plan, and never seems to trust his own judgment. It’s aggravating watching Teddy –essentially- competing with himself to make good lifelong decisions. The problem is the Teddy we see only controls 15 minutes a year and he spends most of it trying to figure what changed.
Long Story Short is a maddening teeth-gnasher. The idea isn’t terrible, but the writing is. There is no shortage of head-slapping moments in this film and you’ll end up asking yourself: “Does a guy this stupid really deserve to get a second chance?” I feel like writer/director Josh Lawson started with a decent idea, but never sussed it out completely. He needed, bare minimum, two other writing partners including at least one woman. And, quite frankly, YOLO as a life lesson is incredibly short-sighted … and it tends to be a favorite among people with huge regrets, like high school dropouts and teen parents. Oh, what’s that? You “don’t mean them.” Well, who else besides me is going to watch your crappy movie?
For Teddy, the future is unclear
Every hour, he ages a year
Hey dude, don’t sweat
Because I can just bet
In a week, you’ll have nothing to fear
Rated R, 90 Minutes
Director: Josh Lawson
Writer: Josh Lawson
Genre: Groundhog Day-ish
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Goldfish
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Teeth-gnashers
