One of Them Days | 2025
SZA and Keke Palmer in ONE OF THEM DAYS.
A quick look at post-COVID box office returns might suggest that the R-rated comedy is dead. There have been a couple of exceptions (2023's No Hard Feelings springs to mind ), but it's notable that two of this year's best R-rated comedies, You’re Cordially Invited and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, movies that once upon a time would have been surefire theatrical hits, went straight to streaming in the United States. The days of Wedding Crashers (2005), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), and Superbad (2007) seem well behind us, not to mention more recent hits like Blockers (2018) and Game Night (2018).
Enter One of Them Days, a January release that has quietly become the fifth highest-grossing film of the year so far. It is a moderate-sized success that stands out amongst the splashier films with built-in audiences that have outperformed it, like Captain America: Brave New World, A Minecraft Movie, and Snow White. Its $50,000,000 gross on a $15,000,000 budget is nothing to sneeze at, but it's hard to escape the feeling that this would have done much bigger numbers 10, 15, or even 20 years ago.
The film stars Keke Palmer and SZA as roommates Dreux (Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA). Dreux is working as a waitress but dreams of owning her own restaurant, and has an interview booked to join a prestigious program that could help her achieve her dream. Alyssa is an unemployed artist whose taste in men is questionable at best. When she gives her loutish boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal) their rent money to drop off with the landlord, he runs off with his other side chick instead, leaving Dreux and SZA in a desperate rush to get the money back, or figure out a way to make $1,300, or face eviction in eight hours.
It truly is "one of them days," as director Lawrence Lamont constantly levels up the desperation and the stakes of Dreux and Alyssa's seemingly Sisyphean task. By giving us engaging characters with strong motivations and increasingly dire stakes, One of Them Days draws the audience in and keeps us invested in their story. While Palmer and SZA's dynamic may be completely different, I was often reminded of the comedies of Laurel and Hardy, in which the road of good intentions is often paved with escalating mishaps and kooky side characters who both help and hinder our heroes.
Along the way, they have to contend with predatory payday lenders, uncaring landlords, encroaching gentrification (as represented by Maude Apatow's very white new girl on the block), expensive ambulance rides, Facebook Marketplace deals gone wrong, and rampaging gangsters. It all works so well because it's indelibly grounded in the film's milieu. One of Them Days is consistently hilarious because it's relatable; its characters face the near-constant threat of very real, everyday struggles that, while certainly exaggerated, mostly ring true.
It feels like a throwback, calling to mind other Black-centric comedies of the past like Friday and Barbershop, while charting its own path through the struggles of life in 2025. Palmer and SZA are both excellent here, bringing an energy and charm that's difficult to resist. They give us characters worth rooting for in a sticky situation spiraling wildly out of control. Its relative success at the box office is also cause for optimism. Movies like this deserve the chance to find their audience in theaters. While You’re Cordially Invited and the 4th Bridget Jones, both solid films in their own right, skipped theaters and all but disappeared on Prime Video and Peacock, respectively, One of Them Days making a box office splash is enough to give hope that comedies like this can survive and even thrive at the box office. Now that it's available to stream, its strong word of mouth should carry it far.
