Somebody I Used to Know review – Dave Franco-directed dramedy is a sickly stodgefest
This stodgy relationship dramedy is directed by Dave Franco, who co-writes with his star (and wife) Alison Brie. I wonder if at some stage in the past one or both of them have seen Jason Reitman’s jet-black comedy Young Adult, scripted by Diablo Cody? There are some distinct similarities. The tone, however, is different: this is an odd combination of broad semi-satirical humour and deeply serious hugging and learning.
Brie plays Ally, a producer in LA who long ago abandoned her dream of making serious documentaries and now runs a silly TV reality show. When this gets humiliatingly cancelled by the network, Ally comes miserably back to her home town in a state of midlife crisis and discovers that she is still very much attracted to Sean (Jay Ellis), a handsome, sweet local guy whose heart she broke 10 years ago by leaving him to pursue her film-making career. Sean is now getting married to a stylish and supercool young musician called Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons). Poor, messedup Ally hangs around, making everyone uncomfortable with her obvious desire to break up this relationship and get back with Sean.
But then there’s something else: the more she gets to know Cassidy the more they like each other, and Ally sees in Cassidy a younger version of herself (although the impact of this revelation is undermined by the fact that both the older and putative younger versions of Ally are equally uninteresting). It’s nice to see a role for Julie Hagerty as Ally’s sexually active mom, getting some afternoon delight with a teacher from Ally’s old school – but her in flagrante scenes come close to being embarrassing in the wrong way.
• Somebody I Used to Know is released on 10 February on Prime Video
expend all of her energy, but instead she’s stuck inside a one-bedroom apartment slamming her head against the wall,” she joked. “When are they going to put this woman on Real Housewives of Atlanta?”
And on the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon reported that 72% of State of the Union viewers had a positive reaction to Biden’s speech. “That’s amazing – we can’t even get 72% of Americans to agree on what an M&M should wear,” he joked.
Fallon described Biden’s speech as “passionate and energetic”, or in other words: “he basically went from decaf green tea to Mountain Dew Code Red.”
Among many things, Biden talked about the strong jobs market. “He said people are working as bankers, real estate developers, dancers, philanthropists, Broadway producers – and that’s just George Santos,” Fallon quipped.
Fallon also recapped Republicans’ booing and heckling of Biden. “It was a busy night for Marjorie,” he said of Greene. “She went straight from the State of the Union to getting her 102nd
Dalmatian.”
All told, about 23 million people watched the speech. “It’s always a good sign for democracy when the State of the Union gets the same number of views as the trailer for Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” Fallon noted.