Friday, May 2, 2025

One of Them Days

One of Them Days

A hilarious buddy comedy, One of Them Days makes the most out of its lead performers and its premise.

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Movie comedies feel like a rare commodity nowadays. I'm sure a large chunk of it is the emphasis on TV comedies, which now have more platforms than ever to get produced. So instead of making a new movie every year, Danny McBride continues to make shows for HBO and even his Pineapple Express counterpart Seth Rogen is making a TV Show now. Another, much larger part of it, is how few straight comedies are being greenlit by studios. The lion's share of comedies that reached cinemaplexes last year were either genre hybrids like Deadpool and Wolverine or The Fall Guy or indie darlings with dramatic elements like A Real Pain and My Old Ass. So it was refreshing as hell to not only have an R-rated comedy drop into theaters, but also watch it succeed at the box office. Hell, being good would be a bonus. And lucky for me, One of Them Days is quite good.

The Setup

The movie centers around two best friends and roommates, Dreux and Alyssa, who just found out that their landlord didn't get their rent. Now with a day to either track down their missing money or make it back, Dreux and Alyssa go on a series of misadventures to change their fortunes.

One of Them Days is an absolute blast. The chemistry between our leads, Keke Palmer and SZA, is fantastic, it's relentlessly silly, and still has all of the heart to stitch it all together.

It's also the first in a genre that comedies have been missing for some time: strong working class/everyone vibes.

I'll use HBO/Max/whatever the fuck they are now as an example. Right now Max is on something of a hot streak TV-wise thanks to a series of ridiculous/darkly funny shows about rich people having problems. We've got The White Lotus, The Righteous Gemstones, and Hacks all with new seasons out this year. And while they each have plenty of moments of hilarity and humanity, the grind of day to day life is far removed from these shows. No one in these shows is struggling to pay a single bill.

Hence why a movie entirely centered around two women trying to make rent money before getting evicted, with jokes made about how low their credit scores are, feels like a breath of fresh air. And that's before the movie, quite pointedly, highlights that our ladies' desperate circumstances isn't due to a lack of talent or some kind of character flaw, they simply haven't gotten a break and may have made a bad choice here or there (at worst).

If anything Dreux and Alyssa are really admirable because of how quickly they adapt, come up with new ideas, or swallow their pride to get through. 

But that's stuff you start to notice in the quiet moments when the jokes aren't flying a mile a minute.

By this point, Keke Palmer is a cheat code for your movie if you want to inject it with a bottomless well of humor and charisma and the movie, smartly, centers her Dreux at the center of this movie. She has the lion's share of big reactions, riffs and physical gags in this movie. Which is especially smart since the second half of the this buddy comedy pair is SZA, who is making her screen debut. Not that you can tell.

What I like about SZA's approach is that she's clearly defined as the straight woman in what is a truly absurd series of events. Which leans into her character's main flaw, being too passive with partners who take advantage of her, and means we've got a nice natural contrast to Palmer's livewire performance. She's also not afraid to be the butt of the joke, which is something even more experienced actors fail at nowadays.

This dynamic, aka a musician turned actor playing off against a very energetic performer through a series of misadventures around their predominantly black neighborhood (and cameo roles for folks like Katt Williams) gave me strong Friday vibes in the best way. 

Without getting too into the cultural analysis weeds, one of the things that makes movies like the Friday franchise special is how it portrays living in a neighborhood that would dubbed by many as "the hood," as a frequently fun and joyful place with a sense of community versus a dangerous crime ridden hell-hole.

The Verdict: A Romp

A hilarious buddy comedy, One of Them Days makes the most out of its lead performers and its premise. 8/10

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