★★
After a devastating break up on the eve of her cross-country move, Jenny enjoys one last NYC adventure with her two best pals.
Classification: 15
Netflix’s latest romantic comedy benefits from strong chemistry between its female leads but suffers from a lack of focus on its interesting main narrative. The relationship between Gina Rodriguez’s Jenny and Lakeith Stanfield’s Nate is told entirely through flashbacks, from how they met and how they broke up and all the experiences in between. These scenes are the highlights of the film as it really allows the actors to shine and allows Rodriguez to explore her character’s flaws and history. These scenes are sprinkled throughout the film as Jenny has one last adventure with her friends but the film never finds the right balance between its dramatic moments and its more raunchy comedy.
The majority of the film is the adventure, which isn’t that adventurous as the girls seek out tickets to a music concert, marijuana and answers to their questionable love lives. The results to these escapades not being particularly exciting but its the chemistry between the three leads that makes the Someone Great enjoyable to watch. Rodriguez, Brittany Snow and DeWanda Wise play well off each other and their friendships are believable and their differences in personality is the basis of the film's comedy. Snow is the Monica, DeWanda is the Phoebe and Rodriguez is the Rachel, known archetypes but the actress’s bleed through this with their natural charisma. They are having a lot of fun in this film and that enjoyment makes the comedic situations more enjoyable.
All three girls love lives are given significant attention in the story, more so to Rodriguez’s character with it functioning as the main narrative arc. Snow’s storyline providing comedy and Wise’s providing those sweet romantic moments the audience can aww at. These three storylines coalesce into a story about the platonic love of friendship between the characters and how life and romance won’t alter their strong connection between each other. That’s where Someone Great falters as it's trying to balance two different types of tones in its story and doesn’t find that good cohesion, it's like the film is trying to be Bridesmaids and then at the same time have an emotional resonance similar to Blue Valentine.
This film’s world works under rom-com realism, the girls have amazing jobs, can seem to spend their whole day getting exclusive music tickets and drugs consequence-free so when the hammer comes down with how Rodriguez and Stanfield’s relationship fell it makes their adventure less believable. Rom-Com rules and reality are never really established in Someone’s Great, by trying to address the two possibilities it barely accomplishes what it wants in either.
Overall, Someone Great is held together by the chemistry and enthusiasm of its lead performers. Even with its weak story structure and predictable plot developments, both the romance and comedy are amusing because of Rodriguez, Snow and Wise letting these characters move past their stereotypes and allows the humanity within them to shine.
Director: #JenniferKaytinRobinson
Release Date: April 19th 2019
Available exclusively on Netflix.
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database
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