Charming, Breezy, and Forgettable, Someone Great Is Made for Easy Viewing
The best parts of Someone Great come when the three leads—Gina Rodriguez, Brittany Snow, and DeWanda..
The best parts of Someone Great come when the three leads—Gina Rodriguez, Brittany Snow, and DeWanda Wise—abandon the pretense of plot, let their hair down, and dance. They only actually dance during a handful of scenes, including a fantastic dressing-up montage set to Lil Kims “Jump Off.” But even when theyre stationary, it feels as if the trio has a chemistry that shimmies and bumps to the movies spunky hip-hop/electro-pop soundtrack.
This might seem distracting, but theres barely a story to be found in this movie anyway. Rodriguezs lead, Jenny, is moving for a new job—leaving New York, her friends, and her longtime boyfriend Nate (Lakeith Stanfield) behind. On her last day in the city, she tries to say goodbye to it all, an odyssey that involves the friends finagling their way into a pop-up concert—and then getting drugs to bring to said concert. (Its cool: RuPaul Charles is their dealer, and he says the mollys free for broken-hearted types.)
Along the way, Jenny falls into her own memories of her relationship with Nate—a tender, loving relationship, strained by the demands of their conflicting ambitions. Stanfield, whose distinguished himself with a weird mix of comedy and horror in both Atlanta and Get Out, gets to play a lovelorn, sensitive type here—while Rodriguez, whose starring role in the telenovela Jane the Virgin wraps up this season, gets to play around with all the fun stuff a nice Catholic girl wouldnt take advantage of. Their romance is central to the story, but Someone Great isnt really a rom-com; its a last-day-of-summer movie, but one that will end with its characters forced to become grown-ups. All three women at the center of the story use Jennys last day to make shifts in their own lives, sneaking a bit closer to the autonomy and maturity that might be expected of near-thirtysomethings.
That being said, the film does hit several classic rom-com notes: inexplicably gorgeous New York apartments; improbably successful protagonists; a smattering of ultra-specific media references; a few experienced cameo performers. (In addition to Charles, theres Rosario Dawson, Jaboukie Young-White, and S.N.L.s Alex Moffat.) For writer and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson—and her remarkably diverse cast—Someone Great feels like a talent showcase: look, heres what we can do. One wishes it were a TV show, if only to get more of Snow and Wise, who make fantastic foils to Rodriguez. Wise, from Netflixs remake of Spike Lees Shes Gotta Have It, wrings comedy out of the movements of her eyebrows; Snow, a veteran performer, gives her brittle, Read More – Source
