One of Them Days, starring Keke Palmer and SZA as fast-talking Los Angeles roommates with nine hours to collect rent money, is a successful throwback to the day-in-the-life genre. The comedies they used to make in the ’90s — movies like “Friday” (1995) and “The Players Club” (1998), which squeezed enough texture between the laughs to qualify as crowd-pleasing slice-of-life. These films, usually produced by New Line, were descendants of “House Party” and Spike Lee (particularly the rousing opening 45 minutes of “Do the Right Thing”), though they also served as a counteraction to the drama of violence Within the city. Which dominated commercial black cinema during the first half of the 1990s. For the genre, they provided a counterbalance to crass and vulgar humanity, teaching the film industry a lesson – about where diversity meets commerce – that it seems it needs to keep learning again and again.
In “One of Them Days,” Drew (Palmer), a diner waitress, and Alyssa (SZA), a do-it-yourself entertainer, are like a comedy team working on advanced levels of verbal gags. speed. They hurl insults and righteous encouragement with equal measure of spiteful glee; The screenplay, by Serita Singleton, has a screwball frivolity that it wears lightly on its sleeve. The two need rent money because their landlord, stubborn immigrant Uche (Rizzi Timane), is cracking down on the tenants in their dilapidated apartment complex in Baldwin Village. The place is a hole, but gentrification is on the horizon, and so are eviction notices. Unfortunately, Alyssa gives the money to her uptight boyfriend Keyshawn (Joshua David Neal), who is full of schemes even though he doesn’t even own a house. He spent the money on his latest business — ugly acrylic T-shirts that say “Cucci.”
How will they get the money? The plot, punctuated by a countdown clock that periodically stops the action, tosses our heroines from one situation to the next, but the real subject of “One One Them Days” is simply the people they keep meeting. The film is an endearingly oblique portrait of a society whose inhabitants revel in their own energetic dysfunction, and it’s so utterly caricatured that it can’t elicit a sincere laugh.
Drew and Alyssa walk into a loan office where Lucky (Kat Williams), the homeless philosopher outside, keeps pestering them through the window, saying “Don’t do that” — and the joke is how entitled he is. a former stripper (Janelle James) who heads the blood bank with utilitarian strictness; the bike-riding thief who keeps going past the fast food checkout window to snatch honey butter cookies; the troublemaker with the big booty (Aziza Scott) who has stolen Kishon’s loyalty, if not his heart; The enthusiastic white girl (Maude Apatow) who moves into the apartment complex and wants to connect with everyone there; Vintage Air Jordans hanging from a power line that Alyssa recovers as if they were gold bullion (street value of $2,500); Her subsequent encounter with an EMS truck after a power line nearly electrocutes her — it all adds up to a stylized portrait of low-rent American desperation.
There’s a romance: Drew’s flirtation with the crooked Mercedes driver (Patrick Cage), a former dreamboat delinquent, and she’s certain she must now be some sort of criminal. There’s a con artist, played with a twist by Lil Rel Howery, who buys Air Jordans, and there’s a ruthless drone-voiced gangster, King Lolo (Amin Joseph), who makes it clear that her complete lack of empathy is actually a parody of herself. And there’s the constant effort our heroines make, as they race through this vortex of casual madness, to keep their heads above it all.
Drew has an interview, scheduled for late afternoon, that could land her a job as a franchise manager—her chance to take her life to a new level. Palmer, although she plays the “straight” part, is so good with her attack that she commands the screen. And SZA, in her first film, simply sizzles. It is a volcano of camp fury. The director, Lawrence Lamont, is a hip-hop video director who is making his feature film debut, and while it may seem like his main mission is to maintain the comedy, the film’s secret weapon is the visual and rhythmic flow it brings to viewers. He – she. Each encounter feels random enough to create its own comedic space. “One Day” touches the pulse of a society that for many is an endless economic pit. In the movie, the pain is real, but the joke is that it turns everyone into a showy coping mechanism. This is what makes them delicious company.