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

I will be the first to say: I miss Insecure, which left a dynamic duo-sized hole in the TV landscape since it ended in December 2021. Issa Rae’s era-shaping series was about many things—the black community in South Los Angeles, 2010s diversity pablum, millennial update, for one – but at its core, it was a seminal portrait of long-term, complex female friendship in one’s late 20s, the kind forged by time, ridiculous escapades and plenty of meaty conflicts for viewers to hash out at the familiar water cooler.

The shadow of the former HBO series looms large over One of Them Days, a raucous new buddy comedy executive produced by Rae and written by former show writer Syreeta Singleton. Also set in South Los Angeles—albeit on a sweltering, bad first of the month when the rent is due and the lease is in flux—One of Them Days, directed by Rap Sh!t and music video veteran Lawrence Lamont, is similarly about two wayward 20-somethings who, in enough moments to be sufficient, can conjure up the effervescent magic of its predecessor.

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

Both live paycheck to paycheck and increasingly at the whims of gentrification (in the form of their new neighbor Bethany, a studious white girl with big eyes knowingly played by Maude Apatow), and both have a tight deadline: the rent must be paid. Dreux trusted Alyssa to pay, and Alyssa entrusted the cash to her deadbeat sneakerhead boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal), who summarily beat them. In lively, mile-a-minute fashion, the two find themselves on a quest with an on-screen countdown: get the money back, get Dreux to her company interview at 16:00 and pay their unsympathetic landlord Uche (Rizi Timane) by 6 so they don’t get kicked out. Hijinks ensue that—despite a trailer that leaned heavily on the film’s most outrageous moments, too high tension (literally) for the moment and especially so out of context—are generally grounded and often funny.

This is largely due to the two leads, especially Palmer, whose natural gravity and distinct delivery – rapid-fire, jazzy, zigzagging, where you wanted to zig – makes even the flattest material sing. Palmer received long-overdue prestige recognition for her dramatic (though, being Palmer, never glitzy) turn in Jordan Peele’s Nope; back in solid comic territory, she makes playing Dreux, a Keke-esque hustler in various circumstances, seem like a breeze. SZA, in her acting debut, is comparatively stiffer, but just as melodic, especially when the two friends go at it – their rat-a-tat banter is the best part of the film. Admittedly, she is covered in the less likable character. Uncertain mastered the balance of the friendship breaks, where both participants are equally right and wrong; in this case—and maybe others feel differently, though I’m usually the less scheming half of my friendships—Alyssa is mostly guilty, at times distractingly callous, and capable of unintentional sabotage.

Alyssa’s self-absorption may be harder to swallow, but Palmer and SZA have enjoyably set off what might otherwise be tough, 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 cases, like a messy episode at a blood bank with an incompetent nurse (Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James) or a snitch 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 effortless, consistent energy. As Dreux notes in a meta-point at her (predictably unpredictable) job interview, chances like this don’t come around for people like her very often. For the still all-too-rare black-led female theatrical comedy, One of Them Days tends toward overkill, but makes its moment count.