Goodbyes are never easy, but if you’re going to have to go through them, you might want to take notes from the Netflix original movie “Someone Great,” which premiered April 19.
Centering around the last hurrah for three best friends about to enter their 30s while living in New York City, “Someone Great” was advertised as an epic farewell to the life Jenny (Gina Rodriquez) once knew with her boyfriend of nine years (Lakeith Stanfield). Fortunately for viewers, this rom com does more than just wallow in the sadness of Jenny’s heartbreak.
Instead, “Someone Great” takes viewers on a full day excursion that features a drug run to get only the best stash from RuPaul, green juice mimosas and a New York rave that name drops headliners like Kanye and A$AP Rocky.
“Someone Great” never pretends to be something it’s not, despite not exactly being what was advertised. Although at first glance the main plot points seem to be Jenny landing her dream job for Rolling Stone and losing her boyfriend, the movie spends little time developing her and Nate’s supposedly epic love story. Viewers only get glimpses of their sweet moments through flashbacks. Those memories are fleeting and typically brought to abrupt halts by quips from her two best friends, Erin (DeWanda Wise) and Blair (Brittany Snow).
There is a certain upbeat air for a film that shows its main character sobbing into a bottle of whiskey more than once.
Breakup films have a tendency to focus on the devastating aspects for drawn out periods of time. This may be because artists expect that viewers are watching these films to feel understood or work through their own feelings. Or it’s simply a representation of the romanticized version of breakups that many conjure whenever they think of splitting with a significant other.
But, this movie isn’t meant to sing to the tune of a breakup ballad. It can’t, thanks to the comedic timing and overall raunchiness of Wise’s character Erin. Her explicit outbursts and detailed sex stories alone are enough to earn this comedy its R rating. While some viewers may find her a bit abrasive, she counters Rodriquez’s dramatic sad girl moments with a hype-man mentality that we could all use on a bad day.
Erin’s own struggle of coming to terms with her first love, Leah (Rebecca Naomi Jones) brings out a softer side in the character. Making her more than just a party girl meant to pull Jenny out of her sorrows helps build the friendship at the heart of this movie into something almost worth envying.
Snow rounds out the trio as the typical good girl goes bad, who starts the movie in an unhappy relationship and finishes with another man who gets very little screen time or development. Her plucky personality contrasts Wise well enough to make it clear why creators would include her, but her performance pales in comparison to the dramatics of Wise and Rodriquez.
There are elements of “Bridesmaids” and “Sex and the City” woven throughout the women’s trek across the city in search of love, drugs and booze. “Someone Great” feels a bit like a mash-up of Saturday Night Live skits and an over-typical girls night movie, to be truthful. Whether or not that’s a bad thing can be determined by individual viewers.
While it’s certainly not a game changer for Netflix, or anyone really, “Something Great” is a watch that can certainly make audiences laugh and may even become a new guilty pleasure. Rom coms don’t have to be good to be loved, after all. It comes with the territory of the genre.
The friendship and chemistry between Rodriquez, Wise and Snow valiantly attempts to make up for all that the movie lacks. It may not be a big budget film, nor does it say anything particularly profound about heartache or moving on, but “Someone Great” at least makes for an entertaining two hours.
