My Review of "Long Story Short"

Long Story Short is a dark comedy that came out in 2021. It's an interesting concept that sort of feels like "A Christmas Carole". I like how it's a reflection of our values and priorities in life. As a dark comedy not everyone will be able to get the humor.

The story starts off on New Years. Our protagonist Teddy is looking for his girlfriend at a big New Years party. The clock strikes midnight and so he grabs a woman that he thinks is his girlfriend and gives her a big kiss. Unfortunately it's not his girlfriend and it just so happens that they were wearing the same outfit.

This starts off a chain of events. He quickly realizes that this new girl Leanne is actually the love of his life. Obviously he breaks up with his then girlfriend to get with Leanne. Pretty soon they're a beautiful couple.

We then see the couple having a conversation in a graveyard. What they're really doing is talking to Teddy's father's gravestone. He had wished he had coupled up with Leanne sooner so that his father could have met her. Time is a funny thing and he doesn't feel there's enough time to do everything that he wants to do in life.

Then we have our Christmas Carole situation. A mysterious woman comes into the picture to talk to Teddy about the speed of life. She talks to him and tells him that time is very valuable and he shouldn't be wasting it if he knows exactly what he should be doing.

Influenced from this old woman the loving couple soon get married the following week. This is when things start to get really strange. The next morning Teddy wakes up and it seems like a year has passed. He's still married to Leanne but things have sped up considerably. They're a year into marriage and Leanne is now pregnant.

Obviously to see this you'd freak out and that's what Teddy does. He's pretty much the same guy as he always is but has no recollection of any of this happening. Then a few minutes later another year passes and so on.

I could see myself freaking out just the same as he did. The dark comedy comes in with his reactions of his life changing as he progresses through the years. He's not able to stop anything that he can foresee happen in the future. It's like he's on a trajectory that he can't control.

Each year he visits makes him more and more miserable especially since he has no control over what is going to happen next. There doesn't even seem to be a way back to his own original time.

As an audience member you're just on for the ride. I'm sure many of us would react the same was Teddy but in slightly different ways. Teddy is not a very good listener. He is reactive and does impulsive things and it kind of makes things a lot worse than they should be. Some of us as audience can at times get very frustrated with him. Then again we wouldn't know what we would do if we were stuck in the same situation.

Overall, I like the concept of this movie. I didn't find it all that funny but there are moments that genuinely had me laughing. It's kind of a predictable lesson that this movie is trying to tell us. We already know that we should cherish the life we live in right now but this is a good reminder. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. It's entertaining enough to watch through once but I don't think I would watch this movie over again nor would I point people towards this movie.