SZA is a natural in her first film

But they should.
Photo: TriStar Pictures/Everett Collection

Is pot becoming too passé for comedy? The thought occurred to me as I watched One of these daysa likable buddy movie that has the exact contours and shaggy charm of a stoner comedy without ever getting around to participating. Like Craig and Smokey, Jesse and Chester, and Harold and Kumar before them, Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) are a pair of brilliant underdogs with a seemingly straightforward task – to scrape together $1,500 for rent by the end of the day – it becomes an excuse for an outrageous set of adventures. It’s not that the longtime roommates and besties think they’d mind relaxing in Mary Jane’s company, but between Dreux’s anxiety about an upcoming job interview; Alyssa’s free boyfriend, Keshawn (Joshua David Neal); and the nine hours they have to avoid reprieve, the couple just don’t have the luxury of getting high. Also, gone is weed’s mild obscenity, at least in California, where it’s been legal for nearly a decade, sold in Apple Store-style emporiums to overwhelmed moms in search of sleep aids and wellness bros looking to microdose. Like the crumbling Baldwin Village apartment complex Dreux and Alyssa live in, weed is being gentrified and the characters don’t need it as common ground. Their bond is based on other things, such as shared history, affection, and a deep familiarity with financial insecurity.

Instead of wallowing in lethargy, the characters are in One of these days are desperate to get just the tiniest bit ahead and escape paycheck to paycheck, an opportunity that continues to elude them despite Dreux’s plans and Alyssa’s manifestation. It’s a testament to the film written by Rap Sh!t showrunner Syreeta Singleton and directed by Lawrence Lamont that it is able to balance the exhaustion its characters feel with the silliness of the episodes they find themselves in. It’s really a testament to the cast, an absurd parade of funny people ranging from comedians like Katt Williams and Lil Rel Howery to relative newcomers like Aziza Scott, who steals the show as local villain Berniece. As Alyssa, an artist who falls somewhere between free spirit and flake, SZA begins her first acting role as someone who has done this all along. With her voluptuous shape and mermaid mane, she looks like a doodle of sensual satisfaction when Dreux, irritated, finds her sprawled in bed after ending up there with Keshawn when she was supposed to talk to him about moving out. And as the aspiring Dreux, who has been waiting tables during the night shift at Norms after failing to finish his business degree, Palmer makes good use of a charisma that could power entire city blocks.

Honestly, watching One of these daysyou start to wonder why Palmer isn’t one of the biggest stars in the world by now, though part of the problem is that she’s a creature of comedy and the studios barely make them anymore. Even when the writing and pacing fall flat in this one, as it certainly does at times, she wrings the laughs out of scenes with screwball physicality and surprising line readings. She makes hay out of a gasp “He knew how to clean all the time!” when he discovered that Keshawn has disappeared with his sneaker collection and what was supposed to be their rent. She turns a fling with her crush, Maniac (Patrick Cage), at her neighbor’s unofficial corner store into a masterfully choreographed bit of lustful awkwardness. Dreux and Alyssa have what looks like a familiar dynamic: Dreux the uptight looking for control, Alyssa the looser who encourages her friend to worry less. As the film begins, it invites you to wonder if Alyssa, whose bad choices range from being dickmatized enough to trust Keshawn with rent to taking a pair of power-line sneakers belonging to a local mobster, is holding Dreux back . But in the end, Alyssa’s woo-woo outlook seems just as reasonable as Dreux’s more traditional attempts to get ahead, when the game is so rigged that every wrong move seems to carry a life sentence.

Among the stops on Dreux and Alyssa’s journey are a blood bank where a stripper-turned-nurse, played by Janelle James, lets an increasingly gray Dreux donate extra pints and a payday loan place that advertises an APR of 1,900.5 percentage. But the most important location is the apartment complex, which may be run by a heavy-handed landlord named Uche (Rizi Timane) with no patience for due process, who can throw chunks of plaster when a door is slammed, but is home to a long-term community treatment the movie with warped affection. When the place gets its initial white girl, Bethany, played with gleeful ignorance by Maude Apatow, residents flock to take in her sweet smile and reactive rescue dog with resignation from people well aware that she represents the beginning of the end. She may not be the enemy herself, but she comes from a plane of existence where everyone has a portable job, their rental units have already been renovated, and no one laughs in their face at the sight of their credit score, like a loan. admin played by the excellent Keyla Monterroso Mejia does by pulling up Dreux’s. Dreux and Alyssa, on the other hand, have to extract their happy ending by facing possible death. Of course they get it. This is the kind of comedy that wants its scrappy heroes, stoned or not, to succeed—though when Dreux and Alyssa do, they choose to celebrate with a cocktail.