Someone Great
Netflix
Female friendship is a hard concept to quantify in any passable script. Too many films of the late nineties and early aughts focused on a message of watered down white feminism and gurl power euphemisms instead of creating fleshed out characters. Writer and director Jennifer Katlin Robinson has not only created fully realized, smart, and lovable characters, but ones that you would want to be friends with yourself. On top of having an immensely well written script the cast is full of proven female leads, including Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), Brittany Snow (Pitch Perfect), and DeWanda Wise (She’s Gotta Have It). Somehow Katlin made a romantic comedy about friendship, and thanks to today’s climate, it is needed more than ever.
The soundtrack is amazing, and I would say it’s another extreme highlight of the film. (Songs by Big Freedia, Lizzo, Lil’ Kim, and Lorde are included.) Gina Rodriguez plays Jenny, a woman who has simultaneously earned her dream job at Rolling Stone, and in consequence loses a partner of nine years (Lakeith Stanfield). This also creates a watershed moment in her friendships with Blair (Snow) and Erin (Wise); who are also growing in different aspects of their personal and professional lives. Thanks to Jenny’s downward spiral, the trio needs to traipse through an alcohol and drug tinged melancholia, trying to make it to an amazing concert the night afterward. Shenanigans ensue along the way, choices are made, and epiphanies are reached.
The scenes where the women feel innately themselves and play off each other are the highlight of the film. While I enjoy nearly all comedies surrounding people’s personal foibles, these characters’ constant movement throughout New York City felt not only familiar but tired. The film goes from one set piece to the next, multiple wacky encounters with male acquaintances, until the final endearing culmination. The fact that everything happens in one day makes little to no sense. The side characters are mostly ridiculous and rarely add anything, lending to unrealistic reactions from our characters. A lot of our main trio’s decisions and ensuing actions are fueled by men, whether they’re their bosses, romantic partners, drug dealers, or acquaintances. When Robinson dives headfirst into female vulnerability she gets the best moments, and it might have had more emotional impact had there not been as many side plots as there were.
I like the idea that these women need the inciting event of their friends’ breakup to realize their own wants and needs, because that’s generally how self-realization happens in your late twenties. When you’re especially set in your ways, change can be scary, but in our current times that’s especially true: the job market is a joke, nobody is making any money, or buying houses, or feeling safe in general. Female autonomy and freedom is important to witness, even in a romantic comedy, and to see three strong women struggle to see themselves through a lens of worthiness and powerfulness is genuinely entertaining. If there is any film that encapsulates the feeling of trying not to stand still it’s this one.
