One Of Them Days Review

“People always love to act a fool on the 1st” is a line uttered in One of Them Days. And it’s used more than once, not just because it’s pretty funny; it summarises the events of the film quite well, but also what that means to a working class community. Rents are due, paychecks come in, and there is a rush from the common to uncommon man to receive or better yet demand their worth in the hopes of survival.

Plucking us right into this world, we follow Dreux (Keke Palmer), a hustling waitress who can make the most bustling diner feel like a family kitchen. She’s a perpetual hard worker but it’s not reflected in her living environment, a rundown building complex which seems to be changing by the minute as evictions increase and the landlord Uche (Rizi Timane) seeks more affluent tenants. But very quickly, these problems are thrown into the hyperdrive as Dreux’s best friend and roommate Alyssa (SZA) seems to have left their rent money in the responsibility of her live-in boyfriend, sending them on an odyssey across LA to raise enough money to avoid getting evicted by the end of the day.

One of Them Days is a film that moves as fast its characters, trying to find a situation that benefits them before they are eaten whole by homelessness or anyone they could piss off in the process of finding 1.5k in the space of 8hrs. Where this plot could easily leave us on the lurches with its characters to focus on pace and plotting, an immense amount of faith is put in the main performers; Keke Palmer and SZA who create an amount of chemistry that eases any doubts about their feasibility of an uptight planner like Dreaux being friends with an airy, “led by the spirit” slacker like Alyssa.

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Beyond the screenplay, which tells us they’ve been friends/roommates for a while, there’s history in their reactions where they smoothly slip ad-libs off one another like water off a duck’s back, but also immediately have each other’s back in every threat that faces them. Their approach in every situation, which can range from Alyssa’s impulsivity to Dreaux’s street smarts, conflicts in every joke, plot development, and character moment, keeping every mechanism in the perspective of these two women and letting that inform the world around them.

For what One of Them Days has in tightly plotted fun which escalates from high APR payday loans to a blood donation that ends looking like the ending of Carrie (1976) and cast chemistry, it has a surprising amount of poignancy with the search for rent money taking them Dreaux and Alyssa across LA as they see exploitative payday loans suck the life out of a community, a hobosexual boyfriend who will blow money on a shitty potential clothing brand rather than a tangible future, a blood transfusion carried out by an incompetent stripper turned nurse. As Dreaux and Alyssa scrounge to survive their current living situations, everything that stands in their way are people trying to do the same or even worse, exploit the situation to their benefit.

Thankfully, it goes down easy with a sheen of ridiculous comedy like Friday (1995) that came before it, but there’s something surprisingly tragic about Alyssa and Dreaux that the film doesn’t ignore, making me laugh harder and invest myself into the personal stakes that One of Them Days presents.