One of Them Days Review: Keke Palmer and SZA Join Forces

Keke Palmer and SZA Team Up for the Charmingly Silly One of Them Days

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Keke Palmer presumably hasn’t often been strapped for cash since her child-star days – she’s only 31, but has been in show business for 20 years at this point – but it’s just as likely that she understand the hustle that Dreux, her cash-poor character in One of Them Days, goes through on a daily basis. Granted, there’s a lot more struggle to Dreux working long shifts waitressing at a 24-hour chain diner just to afford an apartment in a run-down Los Angeles complex, under constant threat of eviction by her enterprising landlord (who keeps an eye on the gentrification potential of prospective tenants). Still, although Palmer can afford Los Angeles digs, she’s no stranger to the grind. Consider that she’s been so busy hosting stuff, doing guest appearances, doing TV voiceover work, and apparently releasing an album (as well as having a child) that she’s just now getting around to starring in her feature follow-up to Nope, the Jordan Peele movie that seemed poised to break her through to another level of movie acting – two and a half years ago.

One of Them Days, a bright and antic broad comedy, doesn’t carry the same weight as Nope, but it’s also less ephemeral than, say, hosting a redo of Password or showing up for various Jennifer Lopez vanity videos. Unlike those projects, it’s easy enough to imagine this one becoming a beloved and rewatched comfort movie. It follows the reliable one-crazy-day structure, where a couple of straightforward tasks – in this case, pay rent and show up for a job interview – spiral into a digression-heavy schemes and mishaps. The main problem is that Dreux’s roommate and best friend Alyssa (the singer SZA) has delegated the first task to her worthless boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal), who promptly absconds with the $1,500 owed to their landlord. Now the girls have nine hours to come up with the money, during which Dreux must also nail her interview for a major promotion, hopefully in aid of not running into the same damn problems (however redressed in different clothes) the next month.

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Writer Syreeta Singleton (who worked on producer Issa Rae’s TV series Insecure), in addition to writing some good lines and gags for her heroines, portions out just the right amount of weariness behind Dreux and Alyssa’s misadventures: They’re both tired of the ridiculous hoops they’re made to jump through just to keep living their lives as Black women, yet the movie maintains a consistent cheerfulness derived from their friendship’s shorthand. Early on, a funny scene demonstrates what valuable currency that can be: Dreux must distract the quick-tempered Berniece (Aziza Scott) while Alyssa sneaks into her apartment to find Keshawn, and so attempts to pass herself off as Berniece’s forgotten old friend from high school. The gambit works briefly, but it’s no substitute for the real thing.

Palmer and SZA may or may not be real-life friends (they did share an SNL episode back in 2022) but they’re plenty convincing playing them, and the movie doesn’t force the clear buddy-duo contrasts: Dreux thinks and talks fast (with some of Palmer’s weirder vocalizations recalling Jim Carrey) while Alyssa, an artist, tries to affect a more free-flowing, universe-will-provide type of attitude. The movie isn’t about pitting their worldviews against each other so much as testing whether their mutual loyalty can stave off the treacherous rest of the world: the bad boyfriends, the low credit scores, the opportunistic landlord, the very face of clueless gentrification (gamely provided by Maude Apatow), the actual criminal shakedowns. Director Lawrence Lamont bops through this material with energy and a keen eye for uncommented-upon sight gags, like how sweet Mama Ruth (Vanessa Bell Calloway) has set up an operational convenience store within her modest apartment. The movie is an object lesson in how sometimes a steady stream of amusing scenes that nail a particular comic tone can be better for comedy than big marquee LOL set pieces (though there are some big laughs, too). Once in a while, the celebrity guest-star cameos throw off the timing, like they’re waiting for entrance applause. Mostly, though, the movie’s cartoonishness feels pitched just right, a heightened silliness that the characters’ circumstances keep bringing back to earth.

The problem with introducing some economic realities into a crowd-pleasing farce is that it’s hard not to betray one or the other in the end; it won’t surprise anyone that One of Them Days opts for the pleasure of the crowd, rather than the unpleasant reality that, for anyone with such a small margin of error, one busy day is far more likely to shift fortunes for the worse than for the better. As a result, the final stretch has perhaps too much coincidental maneuvering of the fates for the leads’ benefit, with the structure of its farce seeming secondary at best. Maybe that’s an inevitable byproduct of movies often being made by those who have come out the other side of those long odds – and maybe that’s fair for One of Them Days, which beats odds of its own as a funny, well-made studio comedy getting a theatrical release in 2025.

Director: Lawrence Lamont
Writer: Syreeta Singleton
Starring: Keke Palmer, SZA, Aziza Scott, Joshua David Neal, Katt Williams, Maude Apatow
Release Date: January 17, 2025

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.

Keke Palmer and SZA Team Up for the Charmingly Silly One of Them Days