Craig D. Lindsey
When we last left adorable, Hollywood power couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, they dropped an indie romantic drama/cabin-in-the-woods thriller called The Rental, trying (and failing) to craft a slasher movie for all those savvy, Airbnb moviegoers out there.
Even before Rental was released, news dropped of the rom-com they wrote during quarantine. Much like what they attempted to do with Rental, this love story is going to be, as Franco said, “a smarter, more elevated version of a romantic comedy.” Well, here we are with Somebody I Used to Know, a movie named after that gotdamn Gotye song that’s always playing when you’re trying on pants at a clothing store.
Once again, Franco is behind the lens while Brie is in front as Ally, the textbook career-minded gal who doesn’t have her shit together in the romance department. A one-time would-be documentary filmmaker, she’s now in LA running the reality show Dessert Island. When her show gets canceled, she takes a trip back home to Leavenworth – the Washington tourist town, not the Kansas prison. (With the way she begrudgingly returns home, Ally does make it seem like she’s heading back to jail.)
After finding out her mother (Julie Hagerty — because, of course) is getting her back blown out on the regular by Ally’s third-grade teacher, she drowns her sorrows at a bar, where she runs into old ex Sean (Jay Ellis). They end up having a fun day together (which consists of downing lots of pretzels and cheese), which Ally mistakes for Sean rekindling a spark. Little does she know that dude is actually about to get married to Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons), a bisexual punk rocker who immediately senses trouble when Ally starts hanging around. (Since two people named Sean and Cassidy are getting hitched, it appears as though either Brie or Franco is showing love to the ‘70s heartthrob-turned-TV drama showrunner.)
If this sounds too much like My Best Friend’s Wedding to you, you’re not alone. Even Clemons’s character asks if Brie’s protagonist is gonna pull the same shit Julia Roberts pulled in that date-night favorite. While it’s evident that Brie and Franco are in a subversive mood, making a far-fetched rom-com with well-rounded characters, it’s still a far-fetched rom-com. As much as Brie, Ellis and Clemons work together to play flawed people in an f’d-up love triangle, ridiculous, cringeworthy, goofy-ass hijinks (we’re going streaking!) still ensue. Believe it or not, most of it is done by Haley Joel Osment, who basically gets his Jack Black on as Sean’s wacky brother.
If anything, Franco and Brie prove that you can make a mediocre rom-com where people of color play integral parts. They don’t have to be the sassy comic relief – they can actually be the ones the pale-faced star wants to bone. They even have a mustachioed Danny Pudi (Brie’s ol’ Community co-star) as a friend who basically serves as the audience surrogate, reminding Brie and Ellis’s characters that every move they make is wrong AF.
Franco and Brie also don’t comprehend how bad the optics look with this film. I mean, it’s a rom-com where a white woman disrupts the nuptials of two people of color. They better pray that sistas don’t discover this film and make Brie the poster child for white women who want to destroy Black relationships. I don’t even understand why Ellis, who is still an emblem of Black-women scorn for all the fuckboi shit he did on the HBO show Insecure, agreed to do this.
Yes, Somebody I Used to Know is Franco and Brie once again trying to breathe fresh, new life into a stale movie genre. But, apart from bringing some more multicultural flavor, it’s another toxic, tiresome love train you and your significant other can get on this Valentine’s Day.
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“Somebody I Used to Know” is streaming Friday on Amazon Prime.
