ONE OF THEM DAYS - Mark Reviews Movies

One of Them Days, Sony Pictures

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | January 16, 2025

One of Them Days features three major countdowns: one to a job interview that could mean financial security for two best friends and roommates, another to the pair being evicted from their apartment because of money troubles, and a third that comes later and, hence, won't mentioned. These are desperate times for Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA), two women in their 30s who don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck—or without one, in the case of the latter—but have to. The setup and characters feel real enough, so when Syreeta Singleton's screenplay takes those very real concerns to levels of comedic absurdity, it's quite funny.

Lawrence Lamont's debut feature struggles, though, in between those bigger gags, if only because everything seems too relaxed when the immediate stakes of a scene aren't right there. This is a story about two people trying to keep their home, trying to get out of financial insecurity, and, eventually, trying to stay alive. The last thing it should come across as is any kind of relaxed, but Lamont saves the movie's momentum and energy for the showiest of its jokes, leaving the rest of it to fall into an unfortunate lull.

It's quite unfortunate, too, because Palmer and SZA, the singer making her big-screen acting debut, are so immediately likeable and believable as these working-class friends. Living in Los Angeles in a slowly-but-surely collapsing apartment complex, Dreux is a server at a local diner, where everyone loves her and she's hoping to become the restaurant's manager, and Alyssa is, well, not nearly as stable in her career prospects. She is an artist, though, who could make something of her art, if she hadn't become so dependent on hoping for a man in her life who could take care of such annoyances as paying rent and the bills.

The problem here arrives because of Alyssa's current boyfriend, a guy named Keshawn (Joshua David Neal) who pretty much Alyssa's mirror image. Alyssa doesn't notice the way he has been playing her, because he has one anatomical feature that's far too distracting for her pay attention to his many, many flaws.

Keshawn was supposed to give the friends' rent payment to landlord Uche (Rizi Timane), who's actively trying to gentrify the apartment complex, while avoiding the basic needs of his current tenants (New holes keep forming in the ceiling anytime someone shuts a door in Dreux and Alyssa's place). Instead, he kept the cash for himself and bails on the women as soon Uche comes knocking, demanding they pay the rent or be kicked out at 6 p.m.

The rest of the plot, then, has the two friends trying to devise questionable plans or increasingly dangerous schemes to make $1,500 in a matter of hours. Most of these are very funny, such as a scene at a payday loan place that both is a biting critique of such predatory establishments (Katt Williams plays a man who situates himself outside the building to warn anyone who gets near it, while Dreux assumed the advertised interest rate was the business' date of establishment) and doesn't play out the way we think it might. Keyla Monterroso Mejia plays the in-house loan officer, whose only two emotions seem to be annoyance with people she knows will become indebted to the company and hysterics when she finally meets two people who are objectively unqualified to be swindled.

There are more such sequences, too. They include a trip to a blood bank, where the joke of a phlebotomist on her first day evolves into a literal bloodbath, and a lengthy subplot involving retro sneakers, which includes electrical shock, an escape from an ambulance, a cameo from Lil Rel Howery, and the entire course of the third act, in which Dreux and Alyssa's problems become potentially deadly. Singleton's screenplay is smart in the way it escalates the complications of these scenes, and that's not even mentioning how Dreux and Alyssa unintentionally earn the ire of Berniece (Aziza Scott), another woman Keshawn has latched himself to, who makes it her mission to find the pair.

In between the over-the-top antics, though, the movie is oddly undercut by material that doesn't quite fit the mood or momentum of the significant jokes. There's a bit too much formula, perhaps, in the course of the friendship, which sees the mismatched pals eventually fall out over their differences (Lamont does have an inspired joke involving a split-screen shot), and in a romantic subplot for Dreux with a guy nicknamed Maniac (Patrick Cage), whom she suspects could be a gangster. That little detail is amusing, so it's too bad the filmmakers can't determine a way to elevate it to the same level as the other, better jokes here.

It might simply be a tonal issue, since the jokes are so good at making the movie's points about a life on the financial fringes and this friendship. When the gags aren't right there to be mined, though, Singleton and Lamont settle for generic, bland sincerity, which basically has the characters telling us exactly what we already know about this situation and this relationship. The talented and charming Palmer does what she can to keep the humor alive in these downtimes, but One of Them Days has too many comedic starts and stops for the material to fully live up to its premise and best jokes.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products