Review: ‘One of Them Days’ loves its leads, but doesn’t love — or even know — itself

The buddy film is one of the most vicious undertakings any filmmaker can find themselves in. It offers more than enough freedom in the realm of premise, be it grounded (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles) or madcap (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), but it’s not always the easiest task to create a story that allows your two leads to thrive without overshadowing each other. And in some cases, it can be dangerously alluring to lean on the sparkly-but-rickety novelty of two celebrities playing off of each other in a quirky situation (see: anything with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart).

One of Them Days — the feature screenwriting debut of Rap Sh!t mastermind Syreeta Singleton — doesn’t fall into either of these traps, but that’s unfortunately less to do with the immaculately paired Keke Palmer and SZA (in her feature film debut) and more to do with the film’s refusal to build itself around them whatsoever. Indeed, there’s a scrumptious wisdom to the world of One of Them Days that’s tragically absent in the way that it’s approached, and despite the somewhat-contagious fun that Palmer and SZA had on this set, the end result is a rather limp affair lacking in tooth, spine, and mind.

The film stars Palmer and SZA as Dreux and Alyssa, two best friends and roommates whose fortunes wind up in free-fall when Alyssa’s boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua Neal) makes off with their rent money. With just nine hours until they get evicted, the duo wrap themselves up in whatever shenanigans they can so as to keep a roof over their head by day’s end.

One of Them Days lives and dies by its adherence to unity. This is true in the context of Dreux and Alyssa as a pair, as well as the community-centric environments that the film takes place in. The snappy sass that effortlessly emanates from the two leads is most effective when Palmer and SZA are playing off of/ganging up on a third person, and there’s a recurring theme of people looking out for each other that a heartier film would have leveraged more effectively, but is a mostly welcome ingredient here nevertheless.

But the critical mistake that One of Them Days makes — and it’s hardly alone in making it — is the lack of structure in its comedy; an ironic misstep, given that unity is its greatest strength. Indeed, the film commits the great comedy sin of throwing random gags, set pieces, and quips at the audience in hopes that more will land than not.

This is a frankly unacceptable approach to cinematic comedy no matter how you swing it. Comedy operates on a level of subjectivity that’s much deeper than most any other storytelling element out there, and that volatility needs to be counteracted by a sturdy framework, which would in turn give the film more of a comedic identity.

Instead, One of Them Days takes a sort of fire-and-forget approach to its comedic beats, quickly shuffling goofs in the door and shuffling them out just as hastily, with hardly an iota of tension to support them. This is not a film that’s interested in being funny; it’s a film that wants to have funny things inside of it. The problem is that it can’t decide what it believes is funny, and so runs the gamut of raunch, slapstick, antagonistic, awkward, and whatever else it can pull out of the proceedings that could plausibly appeal to some abstract sense of humor.

Similar vices litter the plot, which somehow manages to overstuff itself while simultaneously starving itself of true development, as though half of the film’s bells and whistles were dreamed up solely to hit its admittedly refreshing 97-minute runtime. Aziza Scott plays Berniece, a ruthless bully who pursues Dreux and Alyssa for a painfully contrived reason, despite the fact that this film does not need an antagonist outside of the pair’s landlord, and yet affords this character an absurd amount of screentime that adds nothing to the film itself. Also in the mix is Patrick Cage as Maniac, a man that Dreux has her eye on, and the pivot point of a romance subplot that, again, does not serve the film outside of making it longer.

Worst of all is the complete lack of adventure that permeates all of these dynamics and events. There’s no genuine hook to the already out-of-place romance subplot, Berniece is the bad guy who stays the bad guy throughout, and even Dreux and Alyssa go through the typical motions of being besties, getting mad at each other and walking away angrily, and then forgiving each other because the movie is almost over and friendship must win the day.

This would be marginally salvageable if these formulaic beats weren’t played so seriously, but even then, we’d still be left wanting. There’s no reason to doubt that these extra characters could have added nuance to the film’s clear interest in the idea of community, but that also exemplifies the film’s problem; it’s interested in ideas without being interested in how it wants to present them. To go even further, it doesn’t seem that interested in figuring out what it wants to do at all.

All in all, One of Them Days is one of those films that tries to coast by on vibes, and then proceeds to suffer the fate of films that try to coast by on vibes. The sweetness and spunk inherent to Palmer’s and SZA’s chemistry makes the film an entirely bearable ordeal, as the pair’s appeal relies on something far more genuine than a sensational odd-coupling of celebrities so often utilized by the buddy comedy genre.

And yet, it’s precisely because that chemistry is mostly lost to the film’s pejoratively chaotic plot that the failure of One of Them Days stings as much as it does. Palmer has been a consistent delight on our screens since she was a child, and SZA’s competence in front of the camera is a fascinating revelation, so why undercut this incredibly unique pairing with material that doesn’t seem to understand why it consists of the things it consists of?

Indeed, it may be far from Sony’s worst offerings, but One of Them Days made a bad fumble on a great opportunity, and that’s depressing in its own way.