One of Them Days

Directed by Lawrence Lamont, One of Them Days follows roommates Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) as they attempt to come up with their rent money before their landlord throws them out. It’s familiar subject matter that is, right from the word go, employed to underwhelming and unwatchable effect by Lamont, as the filmmaker, armed with Syreeta Singleton’s screenplay, delivers a sluggish, woefully laugh-free comedy that contains little in the way of compelling, ingratiating attributes – with the picture’s arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by the grating efforts of its two stars. (Palmer, in particular, offers up a broad, nails-on-a-chalkboard turn that continuously prevents the viewer from connecting to her character’s plight.) There’s little doubt, as well, that One of Them Days‘ episodic structure paves the way for an often endless midsection devoid of forward momentum, and it’s clear, too, that the inclusion of eye-rollingly inept melodramatic happenings within the film’s final stretch results in about as anticlimactic a finish as one could possibly envision – with the end result a disastrous misfire that would hardly have worked as a five-minute short (let alone a wildly overlong feature).

1/2* out of ****