‘One of Them Days’ Allows Its Stars to Shine
Keke Palmer and SZA make a winning pair of unlucky besties racing to recover rent money in buddy comedy "One of Them Days."
On the surface, One of Them Days might appear to be a femme Friday, pairing Nope star Keke Palmer and Grammy-winning pop-R&B songstress SZA as best friends surviving a wild and crazy day in their L.A. hood. As it turns out, the buddy comedy, from director Lawrence Lamont and producer Issa Rae, is very much like that 1995 stoner hit, but it’s also quite different — and damn funny in its own right.
Like Friday’s Craig and Smokey, Dreaux (Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) are racing against a countdown to doom, with hours to get their hands on money they owe. In their case, it’s not to a drug dealer but to landlord Uche (Rizi Timane), who’s all out of patience. No rent money by six, and he’ll have all their stuff on the curb with a swiftness.
A recently evicted neighbor’s belongings stacked at the curb serve as grim motivation to take Uche seriously, and is one of many well-placed sight gags in a film filled with them. Occasionally, the gag is just the sudden cameo appearance of a familiar funny face, from Katt Williams, playing Lucky, a wise dude of the streets, to Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James, as ill-prepared blood bank nurse Ruby.
Working from a sound script by Syreeta Singleton (Insecure), Lamont sprinkles the cameos and comic bits liberally as seasoning to the main course of Dreaux and Alyssa’s duo act.
Palmer, an all-around entertainer, can clown around and still maintain Dreaux’s dignity as a hard-working server at Norm’s diner who’s hoping to make the leap to management. SZA, bringing her own quirky pop-star persona to quirky painter Alyssa, isn’t as adept as her screen partner at landing the jokes, but she’s luminous in her first starring role and fine sparring with Palmer in the dramatic scenes.
The yin-yang pair bounce off one another believably as friends whose bonds are tested by their predicament. Their rent-money crisis arises from Alyssa’s boneheaded decision to hand off the cash to her monumentally unreliable boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal). The chaos caused by her poor judgment brings long-simmering conflicts to the forefront.
Dreaux is driven, while Alyssa leaves things up to the universe. The movie doesn’t bother, though, to explore how the latter, given her free spirit and lack of a job, affords all the materials for her large-scale paintings-on-canvas lying around their apartment.
We just know that Dreaux’s and Alyssa’s opposing outlooks — “We need a plan” versus “It’ll all work out” — form their main point of contention, rendered here in basic terms. Yes, of course, sometimes it’s great to let go, let god, as they say, and other times, you better have a plan. It’s not rocket science, and, ultimately, the ladies’ lessons learned aren’t that moving, but the film’s story feels complete and the comedy is consistent.
Lamont constructs several standout set-pieces, including a hectic car-vs-foot chase — riddled with great sight gags and set to Doechii’s slinky speed-rap “Nissan Altima” — involving the roomies’ vengeful neighborhood nemesis Berneice (Aziza Scott). That bodacious character rides a fine line between realness and hood stereotype, but Scott is so committed to the girl’s badass ferociousness that she’s hilarious, adding some of that seasoning the movie almost overuses.
Yet the film doesn’t overdo it, ably balancing the broad comedy and friendship drama and allowing its stars, especially Palmer, to shine. Even if this iteration of a well-tuned formula doesn’t reach the level of the Ice Cube-Chris Tucker classic, it still was a good day.
One of Them Days (★★★☆☆) is rated R, and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
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