Given that 2025 represents the 30-year anniversary of F. Gary Gray’s Friday, it’s somewhat of a surprise that some studio executive at Warner Bros. hadn’t gotten the bright, synergistic idea to remake it. Thankfully, the world probably got something better than that in Lawrence Lamont’s One of Them Days, a film that revives Friday’s spirit while bringing its own flavor, and taking the current state of the world into full account.
At least, the state of the world as far as lower-class Black folks are concerned. Los Angeles may be on fire literally, and the world metaphorically, but the rent is still gonna be due on the first. Not only that, but there’s that one apartment complex you don’t walk past, talented folks are gonna be stuck in a bum-ass job, and you’re gonna have to talk down some friend who hooked up with the wrong person. The point of the film is that life for Black folks goes on, no matter what else might be happening in the world, and playing your position is an art.
For roommates Dreaux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA), that position is that the rent is due at 6 p.m., and because Alyssa’s lamprey of a boyfriend, Keshawn (Joshua Neal), spent it trying to get a T-shirt business off the ground, they’ve got to come up with the cash by any means necessary. From there, One of Them Days takes our duo on a whirlwind odyssey of oddities across L.A., running into all manner of weirdos, cartoonish villains, and not-so-cartoonish criminals.
The film’s comedy may play up old tropes and modern takes on decrepit, clumsy plot conveniences, but the cast—most of them actors of color doing so very much with so very little—keeps finding new ways to make it effective all over again. And Syreeta Singleton’s script is deft and self-aware enough to dodge anything overtly harmful to the Black folks that it’s centered on.
One of Them Days is very much the heir apparent to a class of Black comedy that had started to fade away long before the rest of the theatrical comedy landscape followed suit. That is, a sort of slice-of-life, single-day-in-the-city movie without a high concept in sight. It’s not above the occasional topical swipe. One scene at a payday loan office feels like one unexpected murder away from being a Boots Riley gag, and Maude Apatow’s Bethany seems to just float in from some unannounced sequel to Barbarian, where she plays the living embodiment of gentrification. But the film is smart enough to, well, not get too smart.
One of Them Days is a throwback hangout flick above all, and like the best of them, it plays out just absurd enough to support jokes but honest enough in that there’s plenty of time given over to capturing warm little moments of friendship between the characters. There’s nothing particularly new or unique about the journey that Dreaux and Alyssa go on, but it’s still a joy to experience simply because we’re in the company of Palmer and SZA, leads with such an easy, effortless chemistry and unique comic timing, with Palmer as the slick, quick-thinking, fast-talking straightwoman to SZA’s pseudo-spiritual agent of passive chaos.
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