Somebody I Used to Know Movie Review: A Heartbreaking Romantic Dramedy About Recovering The Creative Spark
Cast: Alison Brie, Jay Ellis, Kiersey Clemons, Julie Hagerty, Haley Joel Osment, Amy Sedaris
Director: Dave Franco
Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime Video
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Somebody I Used to Know is a movie available for streaming on Prime Video. There are plenty of successful romantic comedies. For example, it just came out of Me or You, algorithmically perfect. However, we are not always in the right mood to dedicate our evening to a traditional romantic comedy. Maybe in this moment of our lives love doesn’t interest us, or on the contrary, it’s so good that we would like to feel represented in another way, to find something on the screen that speaks of maturity, work, and friendship. The film, available on Prime Video from February 10, is a fictional romantic comedy directed by Dave Franco and co-written with his wife Alison Brie. It is produced by Amazon Studios, Black Bear Pictures, and Temple Hill Entertainment.
Somebody I Used to Know Review: The Story Plot
Ally is an author and presenter who has given up her hipster ambitions to make a career in television in Los Angeles. She is determined to make it at all costs, and when her transmission, a vulgar meeting between a cooking show and a reality show, is not renewed, she goes completely into crisis. Desperate, she decides to return to her mother, in the town she fled to grow up. Arriving there, she meets her longtime ex, the love of her life, Sean, whom she dumped by choosing her own career and flying away.
The two immediately reconnect, spending the night together around the city and kissing goodbye at dawn. Ally immediately wants to sleep with him, but he mysteriously withdraws and runs away. Determined to get to the bottom of this story, Ally shows up at her house the next day. She discovers that Sean is getting married to Cassidy, a young beautiful, and full of life, and she decides to do everything to prevent him, right during their wedding weekend.
Somebody I Used to Know Review and Analysis
Somebody I Used to Know is a fake romantic comedy. A bittersweet comedy that starts as a romantic and then turns into an atypical coming of age, that of a woman who got lost in her job and can no longer find herself. Ally is convinced that she wants to win back her love for her life, in reality when she returns home, she will go on a journey in search of the young, free, and idealistic self that she had lost sight of. Delving into her past, treated with great affection and love by the very people she abandoned, Ally decides to choose what she really wants.
A fresh and well-done take on the genre. Dave Franco, who directs, never appears. Alison Brie is adorable and great, even when she plays someone who, clearly confused, acts nasty, selfish, and spoiled. The ending is fresh, the indie comedy touch is the icing on the cake. We think we can take sides, to be able to decide who is right and who is wrong, who is good and who is bad, but these characters all turn out to be unbearable, human, plausible, and understandable. Which is what happens in reality.
Franco introduces us to the story with full-screen darkness (which is the absence of something, empty): the frame remains black for seven seconds; in the next frame, Ally is shot in the foreground in the pre-interview, before recording yet another (futile) interview with a television personality who will perhaps save the future of the program of which she is a deeply dissatisfied producer. Reality television was never the destination she had in mind, because the protagonist left her city and all her loved ones to go and live in Los Angeles and work as a documentary filmmaker, and from that moment on she never stopped working, even sacrificing her love life. So when the future of the TV show is at risk of cancellation, Ally is almost relieved. With nothing to lose or gain, she decides to return to her hometown unprepared for the emotional roller coaster ahead.
In Leavenworth, she first meets her ex-boyfriend Sean (Jay Ellis), then she makes the acquaintance of a younger woman who reminds her of the person she once was full of drive, drive, enthusiasm, of spirit. If we were to take a picture of ourselves in moments of crisis, the ones we need to take the time to understand and recover some of the vanished serenity, a shot in low light would come out. The photography of Somebody I Used to Know always evokes the main characters’ conflicting emotions, fears, and hesitations: Ally, Sean, and Cassidy. The story in the first part seems inconceivable to us, in the second it knows how to displace us and unfold in a painfully plausible and real way. “Because sometimes one builds one’s life on just one thing, ”says the protagonist“, but what if it’s the wrong one ? “. There’s no shortage of moments of levity, courtesy of Sean’s brother Jeremy (Haley Joel Osment), an awkward but utterly lovable character; in her imagination Ally runs all of Hollywood; and Benny (Daniel Mark Pudi) whose playful childhood friendship with the protagonist would require a spin-off.
The main actress, Alison Brie, who is also co-writer of the film with Franco, starred – we remember – in Spielberg’s The Post and in A promising woman, bares everything in a film that places her at the center. She manages to show off her amazing acting range: her performance feels like a blend of her past roles. Her interactions with Cassidy – Sean’s new flame that she is the face of Kiersey Clemons – are understandably tense (at first) as they both feel wildly threatened by each other. Last but not least, between Dave Franco’s directorial debut in 2020 with The Rental – and now with this romantic and unapologetically honest second feature, the Neighbors star he is quickly proving to be a multi-faceted director. For what happens in the plot, Franco’s second feature film reminds us that one cannot eliminate an entire side of oneself, that we are not here to resist and endure, and that we must distance ourselves from what distances us from who we are: in short, it nails his echoing sentiments about reclaiming the creative spark and never being too late in life for a second act.
Somebody I Used to Know Review: The Last Words
This is a fake romantic comedy. A bittersweet comedy that starts as a romantic and then turns into an atypical coming of age, that of a woman who got lost in her job and can no longer find herself. Ally is convinced that she wants to win back her love for her life, in reality when she returns home, she will go on a journey in search of the young, free, and idealistic self that she had lost sight of. Delving into her past, treated with great affection and love by the very people she abandoned, Ally decides to choose what she really wants. A fresh and well-done take on the genre.
