Ah, yes, January comedy. The kind of film where SZA gets electrocuted and falls thirty feet down trying to retrieve Air Jordans from a power line … and walks away from the experience ten minutes later, seemingly unharmed. That’s the way January works.
In a day that has at least three times as many hours than average, Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) have to figure out how to make rent, ace and interview, atone for acing an interview, and stay alive. Keep in mind that Dreux starts the day at work, waitressing, and when the two women figure out that Alyssa’s loafer boyfriend Keyshawn has absconded with the money, they have to track him down as a first order of business.
And, of course, Keyshawn doesn’t have the money, having invested it in t-shirts, triggering a day of adventure in which the women have to conjure rent money, interview, tend to their curbed possessions, and avoid two separate groups of people aiming to track them down and hurt them. And yes, before you ask, I just did this above; I am not over how long this day is. It’s like dog years for film. I suppose this is just your average fifty-hour day in the ‘hood.
The film sympathizes with Dreux as waitress and aspiring manager. She seems to think she has a real shot at manager, which would be quite the coup for the young woman (although her interview strikes me as one who would be better suited to front-office work in the corporate chain than in the day-to-day managerial grind … but that’s just me, a person who has worked in both environments). Alyssa, an unknown artist, comes off as a direction-less drifter, which, unfortunately, is how the world sees most artists who have yet to obtain commercial success. We like both women … to a degree. The action is clearly doing the heavy lifting in this film.
One of Them Days is one of them films that seems amiable enough as long as you don’t think about it for more than five minutes. The problem is, I do think about individual films for more than five minutes, and One of Them Days offered several moments that rubbed me the wrong way. Here is a sampling: 1) The film treated its two heroines as being in the wrong for demanding that the two-timing deadbeat thief return the money he stole, instead yielding the moral high ground to the jerk’s new partner, who hunts them down with impunity. 2) When the pair opt for a dubious usurious money lender, the film personifies the voice of reason in the form of a de
generate bum. 3) Not only did the film pretend that selling whole blood was still a practice in the United States (it is not and has not been for years), it tarnished everything about the process, from the reason donors give of themselves to the care taken by the blood extracting professionals. (Oh, and the part where a medium-sized adult woman is not only capable of donating four pints, but is able and ambulatory afterwards.)
I suppose there’s room to believe a blood-stained hallway reminiscent of The Shining could offer humor for some given certain circumstances, but as a blood donor myself, I didn’t find it the least bit funny.
So I can’t say I laughed heartily (or at all) at the gags in the comedy, nor did I think the burgeoning romance between Dreux and Maniac was anything more than physical, however, I did sympathize with the plight of the women; I certainly didn’t wish to see them evicted One of Them Days, so the film has that going for it. I praise it no further. If you’re hoping for a better endorsement, you’ll be waiting until one of them other days.
There was once a waitress named Dreux
Hoping for a managerial coup
About restaurant direction
She had a connection
But about life, she hasn’t a clue
Rated R, 97 Minutes
Director: Lawrence Lamont
Writer: Syreeta Singleton
Genre: Pretending you can fit it all in one day
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The unskeptical
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Blood donors
