Somebody I Used To Know review: Alison Brie channels Julia Roberts
Alison Brie's latest collaboration with husband Dave Franco is a surprisingly fresh and melancholy take on the modern romantic comedy
Film Reviews Alison Brie
“You’re not gonna pull off some Julia Roberts/My Best Friend’s Wedding shit are you?” With that one line, Somebody I Used To Know both tips its hat to its most obvious inspiration and establishes enough winking distance to keep this latest Dave Franco/Alison Brie collaboration from feeling like a toned-down remake of that classic rom-com. Whereas that 1997 film brimmed with broad slapstick comedy as Roberts’ Jules attempted to foil a wedding (in order to bag the groom for herself), Franco’s 2023 twist aims for a more melancholy register.
Ally (Brie, doing double duty as co-writer and star) is at a crossroads. Her successful reality competition show is suddenly canceled. And while she’d love to go back to her documentary film roots, she’s encouraged instead to take some time for herself which, in true rom-com fashion, requires this career-driven protagonist to head back to her hometown. There, a chance encounter with Sean (Jay Ellis), the ex she left behind, has her wondering if she made the right call leaving for L.A. all those years ago. The two still have great chemistry and can egg one another into chugging cheese sauce and every kind of beer available. It’s as if no time has passed; he’s the comforting blanket Ally needs as she reassesses what she wants to do with her life and whether her priorities are what they should be.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Franco and Brie have concocted a grown-up, maudlin-free riff on any given Hallmark movie. That is, until Ally finds out Sean is set to be married—that weekend—to a young, cool, queer, punk rock chick. And once she’s not-so-nakedly flirting with the groom-to-be, Ally must wrestle with whether she wants to emulate Julia Roberts and become that desperate girl trying to mess up a wedding to reclaim what she once lost. If she does, how far will she go before she realizes what she’s fighting for may not be all that good to begin with?
It is no insult to say that Brie is no Julia Roberts. The Community, Mad Men, and GLOW star has a more grounded on-screen persona. It’s one that she’s honed and perfected over the years and allows her to easily shuttle between network comedies and cable dramas, creating indelible characters that surprise you precisely because they feel so familiar. Her charisma, even in a character like Ally who makes up songs on the spot to her cat and who’s keenly interested in naturism, is laced with a wistful sadness for what could have been.
If nothing else, Somebody I Used To Know is a welcome reminder that Brie remains one of our most undersung performers; you’ll never hear “Semi-Charmed Kind Of Life” the same way after you hear what her Ally does to it. Ellis matches her beat for beat, proving as he did in HBO’s Insecure that he can still make us swoon with just a playful glance. Such moments are what make this endearing film worth catching. Where else can you witness Haley Joel Osment doing the worm, Julie Hagerty playing a woman who’s having all the daytime sex she could ever want, and Amy Sedaris as a live-action version of her BoJack Horseman character?
Amid all those standout moments, there’s an ease to Somebody I Used To Know. It’s not just that Franco has assembled a capable ensemble to surround Brie and Ellis (including Brie’s Community co-star Danny Pudi and Hearts Beat Loud standout Kiersey Clemons). It’s that Somebody I Used To Know doesn’t pretend like it’ll surprise its audience. Even if you haven’t watched My Best Friend’s Wedding, you’ll easily surmise what will happen between Ally and Sean. So instead, the film finds an amiable groove where its characters wonder whether what they’ve told themselves they want is indeed what they most desire. And, in Ally’s case, whether getting it is worth sabotaging her career and someone else’s happiness.
Such a proposition may sound modest, but it’s the register Franco and Brie are gunning for. The film’s rom-com template feels more like a structure to play with, a solid foundation on which to question the very tenets of romance and comedy. After all, it’s a genre that oftentimes sees love as a zero-sum game, where pairing up comes at the expense of, say, one’s career, one’s ambitions, or even one’s family. Tackling those thorny subjects with a laidback comedic cadence, Somebody I Used To Know ends up working precisely because it puts an emphasis on the individuals, not the couples they make up.
(Somebody I Used To Know premieres on Prime Video on February 10.)
30 Comments
I was already sold on this because of Brie, but then I saw this:“Amy Sedaris as a live-action version of her BoJack Horseman character”HOOK IT DIRECTLY TO MY VEINS
The Diane-Princess Carolyn reunion we need and deserve
I’m imagining a mix of Princess Caroline and the weird, desperate real estate broker she played on Broad City.Abbi: “Where’s the bathroom?”Broker: “Where ISN’T the bathroom!”
She better wear nekomimis and dye her hair pink!
You don’t need to be Julia Roberts, Alison! We love you just the way you are!
No, she must become Annie for the rest of her acting career!
I’d be ok with that. And I am unanimous in this!
Alison Brie stars as Ally; a plucky young film maker who has the ability to transform live cats into porcelain.
My allergies are all in favor of that.
I don’t get it.
Alison looked so gorgeous on the Tonight Show recently! Can’t wait to watch this Annie-Abed reunion. Apparently they’ve woven in some bits from the Community set that they used to do.
Special shoutout to “Sleeping With Other People”, another romcom starring Alison Brie, which is both one of the best and most underrated rom-coms of this century. I remember AV Club itself included it in a list of movies they’d have loved to get an Oscar nom that year.
I find Alison Brie to be delightful in basically everything she does. Sleeping with Other People, which stars Brie, and the equally delightful Jason Sudekis is one of my favorites.
True, one of the best recent rom-coms
Why is this movie so dark? Can’t see shit.
Fuckin’ Dave Franco just expects his radiant wife to light up the entire set just with her being there.
Came for the Gotye song. Did not hear it. Sad now.
Julie Hagerty I’m in right there. “Seven. Lieutenant Zip died this morning.”
Nothing like the song.
No “that” in the title, for one thing.
Good. That song was fuckin’ trash.
…no.
She’s “rapping” on her press tour. Someone call her agent and tell her to stop, just for humanity’s sake.
It’s for the Community fans. It’s a callback to her on-set antics. I thought it was really cute which is what it’s supposed to be
I know everybody wants a Community movie(and I do too, if we can get Donald Glover AND Yvette Nicole Brown back), but I really want a GLOW movie, so that show could have a proper conclusion.
Nobody wants a Trudy Vogel show?
I’d definitely take that over a Sally Draper show
Although Shipka is a decent actress in her own right to be fair.
So, is the movie not about them becoming a thrupple? That’s absolutely the vibe I got from the trailer.
Sadly, no (that moment in the trailer is verging on queer-baiting because it does not head in that direction at all). Actually, it would have been a much better movie if they’d developed queer vibes between Ally and Cassidy. The AV Club review gives this film a lot more credit than it deserves, I fear. I hated it. It’s not nearly as deep (and not at all subversive of the genre) as the review suggests. It was just…not very good. It doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before. In fact, I would suggest it does far too little to distance itself from My Best Friend’s Wedding. It basically follows that film note for note. Maybe it was trying to distinguish itself in some ways, but it really didn’t work.