Mark Reviews Movies: I USED TO GO HERE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 30, 2020

Kate (Gillian Jacobs) got what she wanted. After at least a decade of working at it, she is now a published author. Her first novel has been released. The publisher has planned a tour for Kate to travel the country and read from her book, signing copies for all of the new fans she will have. She'll hear about the sales numbers, and the reviews will run online, in the papers, and in magazines. She has made it in a way about which most writers can only dream.

This dream fulfilled only lasts for the first couple of minutes of I Used to Go Here, an insightfully amusing comedy from writer/director Kris Rey. That big book tour, her agent informs Kate on the phone as she hauls a big box from a printer back to her small apartment, has been cancelled. The book sales aren't as good as the publishing house had hoped. The fact that publisher is calling off a publicity tour, meant to increase sales, probably means that the numbers are even worse than Kate is being told. Those two minutes of success and hope were probably good while they lasted, though.

As for that box, it's filled with wedding invitations. Indeed, Kate was engaged to a man (He and the small Chicago apartment are the main details of Kate's personal life in her short biography on the book's cover flap), and now, he ignores her calls and text messages.

Meanwhile, her best friend Laura (Zoe Chao) is happily married and about to have her first child, and at an uncomfortable baby shower, surrounded by other happy and pregnant women about her age, they have Kate hold up a copy of her book in a group photo. It's unwittingly adding insult to injury. Everyone else has their lives together in the way they wanted, but Kate, seemingly getting her life together in the way she wanted, is now living with a result that increasingly look like a failure.

Rey's screenplay cuts right to the point—to multiple points, in fact—before the actual premise of the story is even established. That arrives quickly, too, as Kate receives a call from a former college professor, who would like the recently published author to return to her alma mater for a special book reading.

With nothing better to do and no one with whom spend any of this extra time, she agrees to the request. At least David (Jemaine Clement), the professor who encouraged Kate's writing and whose voice still give her visible chills of the infatuated variety, will understand what she's going through and give her a much-needed morale boost. Having a bunch of writing students look up to her as the successful author visiting campus won't hurt her ego, either.

Thus, Kate arrives at her old college, is struck by a flood of nostalgia, and becomes caught up in an assortment of dramas, parties, gossipy rumors, and other youthful enterprises that seem so important to people who have yet to have a taste of the real world, its real disappointments, and its real consequences. That's the central joke here, and as obvious as it may seem and as farcical as some of its payoffs may become, Rey provides such a solid, character-based foundation for the gag that it works on two levels.

It's funny, because we understand and sympathize with Kate's instinct to slide into old, familiar, and comfortable behaviors and ways of looking at the world. It's also perceptive, because Kate's regression to the past offers deeper details about her then and now.

The bulk of the story involves Kate's interactions with assorted people—from her past and who are living something akin to her past now in college. Even before the two reunite, we sense some tension beyond the student/teacher and old-friends dynamics between Kate and David. It's unspoken, although obvious, and even denied by Kate when Laura, who wants photos of their old haunts and classmates who are still hanging around, points out that she had a thing for their old professor.

The other main section has Kate hanging out with current students, a trio of whom rent the house where she and Laura lived when life was made up of endless possibilities of dreams waiting to come true. Living in Kate's old room now is Hugo (Josh Wiggins), an aspiring writer who's in an uncertain relationship with April (Hannah Marks), the star student in David's class.

There's an uncomfortable scene in which Kate offers career advice to the promising young woman. All of April's determination and ambitions are shot down by Kate, playing the pragmatic adult who has achieved what April wants. Has she really, though? It becomes clearer and clearer that Kate didn't write a book she wanted to write—only one she thought might sell—and that nobody, even the people who insist they have, has read her novel.

The gag is how Kate increasingly reverts to previous concerns and attitudes (even acting like a petulant teenager toward the owner of the bed-and-breakfast where she's staying), but the reality is that such matters are much easier than the harsh realities of Kate's own life. Basically, the comedy (climaxing in a poorly planned and even more poorly executed stakeout of David's house) entirely revolves around the character, making us appreciate both on a deeper level than we might otherwise expect.

This is a relatively small film, in terms of its ambitions and its goals, but Rey's tight focus on Kate offers some real wisdom about the main character, played with considerable, awkward charm by Jacobs. I Used to Go Here is a smart, character-centric comedy about how, as tempting as it may be, settling for the easy thing is never a real reward.

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