The inspiration for One of Them Days is the black cinema of the late 1990s, a period when actors like Taye Diggs and Gabrielle Union, Nia Long and Omar Epps were on early career highs. Though Dude Where’s My Car?, as white-sliced as it comes, might also be in the mix.
That was a tale of two white teenage dudes having the day from hell, and One of Them Days does something similar with its story about a pair of young black women who suddenly need to raise a large sum of money or else be evicted from their fairly skanky apartment in a block called The Jungle.
Unsurprisingly, given its name, The Jungle is a place occupied entirely by black people, who may or may not have given this rundown bit of LA its name in a moment of ironic resignation.
This is a tale of escalating woe and increasing amounts of shit hitting multiplying numbers of fans, as Dreux (Keke Palmer) and bosom pal Alyssa (SZA) scamper around LA trying to find the money for the rent, because Alyssa’s no-good (soon-to-be-ex) boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal) has spent it on his latest useless entrepreneurial effort.
Strong black women and feckless black men is a 1990s staple. As is the beef-inflected way everyone addresses each other, much talking to the hand as if a fight were always just on the point of breaking out. This is a film in which stereotypes are embraced and motivations are amplified. The hijinks are cartoonish – there’s even a Wile E Coyote moment when Alyssa takes a full belt of electricity from an overhead cable and falls senseless to the ground. She’s up a minute later, no harm done and mouth still working overtime.
Palmer and SZA are both great. Palmer you’ll maybe know from Hustlers (where she held her own among a tough crowd including J-Lo, Cardi B and Constance Wu) and Nope. SZA is the latest in a long line of artists from the world of R&B and rap who turn out to be charismatic actors. She slots in beside Palmer, whose show this really is.
Their characters are aspirational – Dreux wants to be a businesswoman running a food franchise, Alyssa is an artist who cannot sell her work but keeps going regardless. Correcting the sense of being lectured at, on the side Aziza Scott is the butt (quite literally) of many a gag as Berniece, an oversexed young woman who has taken possession of Keshawn on account of his massive penis (boosted stereotyping for laughs) and is now tracking down Dreux and Alyssa to take revenge on them for breaking into her apartment to try and get their rent money back from the sleeping ex.
White people are few and far between, but writer Syreeta Singleton does introduce Maude Apatow as Bethany, a vector of gentrification who seems to have accidentally moved into the Jungle in much the same way that Apatow seems to have wandered into the movie. It looks for a minute as if Singleton is going to point the story Apatow’s way, but instead uses her as a racially flipped Magical Negro (to borrow Spike Lee’s phrase), a character who has a significant impact but is dramatically inert. At a certain point Bethany will wave a magic wand of some metaphorical sort, in other words.
Everything cruises along on a highly likeable vibe. Ice Cube’s Friday franchise was probably referenced in script meetings between writer Singleton, director Lawrence Lamont and producer Issa Rae, who created, co-wrote and starred in TV show Insecure, which covers a fair bit of the same territory.
There’s nothing too profound going on here, which is not to underestimate the amount of good work – behind and in front of the camera – going on. Easy and vibey are hard to do well. One of Them Days does both very well.
One of Them Days – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2025
