One of Them Days review – Keke Palmer and SZA take a bumpy but fun ride

3 hours ago 1

I will be the first to say: I miss Insecure, which left a dynamic duo-sized hole in the TV landscape since it concluded in December 2021. Issa Rae’s era-shaping series was about many things – the Black community in south Los Angeles, the diversity pablums of the 2010s, millennial dating, for starters – but at its core, it was a seminal portrait of longstanding, complex female friendship in one’s late 20s, the kind forged by time, ridiculous escapades and plenty of meaty conflict for viewers to hash out at the proverbial water cooler.

The shadow of the erstwhile HBO series looms large over One of Them Days, a boisterous new buddy comedy executive produced by Rae and penned by the former show writer Syreeta Singleton. Also set in south Los Angeles – albeit on one sweltering, no-good first of the month, when the rent is due and tenancy is in flux – One of Them Days, directed by the Rap Sh!t and music video veteran Lawrence Lamont, similarly concerns two wayward twentysomething besties who can, for enough moments to suffice, conjure the fizzy magic of its forerunner.

Once again, two friends are at a crossroads, of sorts. Dreux (the ever charismatic and indefatigable Keke Palmer) runs a local diner with aspirations to become a franchise manager; her childhood best friend and roommate, Alyssa (the singer SZA), is an artist skeptical of the corporate path – or really, any path or structure – and ekes out a living by whatever means immediately available.

Both are living paycheck to paycheck and increasingly at the whims of gentrification (in the form of their new neighbor Bethany, a textbook wide-eyed white girl knowingly played by Maude Apatow), and both are on a tight deadline: the rent is due. Dreux trusted Alyssa to pay, and Alyssa trusted the cash to her deadbeat sneakerhead boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal), who summarily beat it. In lively, mile-a-minute fashion, the two find themselves on a quest with an on-screen countdown: recover the cash, get Dreux to her corporate interview by 4pm, and pay their unsympathetic landlord Uche (Rizi Timane) by 6, lest they get evicted. Hijinks ensue, which – despite a trailer that leaned heavily on the film’s most outrageous moments, too high-voltage (literally) in the moment and especially so out of context – are generally grounded and frequently funny.

That’s largely due to the two leads, particularly Palmer, whose natural gravity and distinct delivery – rapid-fire, jazzy, zagging where one would zig – makes even the most flat material sing. Palmer received long overdue prestige recognition for her dramatic (though, being Palmer, never not sparkling) turn in Jordan Peele’s Nope; back in solidly comedic territory, she makes playing Dreux, a Keke-esque hustler under different circumstances, seem like a breeze. SZA, in her acting debut, is comparatively stiffer though equally melodic, especially when the two friends get going – their rat-a-tat banter is the best part of the movie. She’s admittedly saddled with the less sympathetic character. Insecure mastered the balance in the friendship rifts, where both participants are equally right and wrong; in this case – and perhaps others feel differently, though I am usually the less planned half of my friendships – Alyssa is mostly at fault, at times distractingly callous and capable of unintentional sabotage.

Alyssa’s self-absorption may be harder to swallow, but Palmer and SZA enjoyably ham up what could otherwise be try-hard, too gimmicky fare – a stint at a payday loan with a snarky lender (Keyla Monterroso Mejia), a fight with Keyshawn’s vengeful new girl (Aziza Scott). Some of the bits, such as a messy episode at a blood bank with an incompetent nurse (Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James) or a snafu with a gun-wielding neighborhood menace (Amin Joseph), go too far, or lean too cartoonish to land, a level 11 when level 10 would suffice. It’s a bumpy ride, albeit an overall enjoyable one, with a believably character-populated apartment community and unforced, consistent energy. As Dreux notes in a meta-point at her (predictably unpredictable) job interview, chances like this don’t come for people like her that often. For the still too-rare, Black-led female theatrical comedy, One of Them Days has a tendency for overkill, but makes its moment count.