I’m a huge fan of romantic comedies that are relatively light on the romance and heavy on the comedy—especially when said comedy is mostly bound up in the quirks of a super-intense female friendship. So I wasn’t surprised to find myself amused and genuinely charmed by Lawrence Lamont’s One of Them Days, the Keke Palmer and SZA-led buddy comedy co-produced by Issa Rae, that’s quickly become a box-office hit. (It was the number two movie in the country over the weekend, just behind Mufasa.) What did surprise me, though, was how urgent and relevant the film’s plot—which focuses on Palmer’s Dreux and SZA’s Alyssa desperately trying to earn enough money to pay their rent before they’re evicted—feels at a cultural moment increasingly defined by the vast wealth gap.
One of Them Days isn’t cinematically perfect, nor is it necessarily striving to be; there are plenty of gross-out jokes about, among other things, blood-bank donations gone gorily awry. But after watching decades’ worth of socioeconomically comfortable rom-com heroines chase various symmetrically featured guys, despair about their weight, and stress about their weddings, it’s refreshing to watch a movie that fits moments of relatable romantic angst into a larger narrative about two women fighting to keep something way more important than an event venue: their actual home. (I keep an ongoing mental count of female rom-com protagonists who actually want something in addition to a boyfriend, and if you’re curious, it’s basically Gracie Hart wanting to rise through the FBI ranks in Miss Congeniality, Anne Marie wanting to surf pipe in Blue Crush, and Andie Anderson improbably wanting to write about Tajikistan in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, end of list—so it’s always nice to have a new entry to add.)
There’s plenty to love about One of Them Days aside from its premise, however; Keke Palmer’s comedic timing is flawless as ever, and her commitment to a bit (even a silly one) is unparalleled, SZA also more than delivers in her role as a struggling artist trying to break her addiction to fuckboys; and Maude Apatow’s brief cameo as a bumbling, Prosecco-obsessed Los Angeles gentrifier with art-world clout to spare is a subtle yet hilarious indictment of the kind of white girl who moves into a historically Black neighborhood and insists that the negligent landlord is “just really stressed out, I think he’s having money problems.” Still, the clock counting down the hours until Dreux and Alyssa are kicked out of their apartment is the thing that gives the film its shape.
It doesn’t feel coincidental that One of Them Days is finding critical and commercial success just as President Donald Trump takes office again. It has been, to say the least, a rough week for more or less every marginalized person I know, and a Thelma and Louise-style romp for the TikTok era feels like just the ticket when you need to briefly turn off the news and disappear, Don Draper-style, into the movie theater. Yet one of the most admirable aspects of the film is its refusal to dwell in the frilly, inconsequential territory where many buddy comedies centered on women find themselves. Instead, One of Them Days blends genuinely funny writing with the kind of heart that comes from giving characters realistic and actually recognizable hurdles to overcome. If I’m going to have to watch a new Dune movie seemingly every year for the rest of my life, can we at least get a sequel to this one, too?
