Somebody I Used To Know review: Dave Franco, Alison Brie depict youthful exuberance and old-age angst delightfully

3.5/5

STORY: Career or love, or love and career? When an otherwise ambitious Ally (Alison Brie) runs into an old flame from over a decade ago, emotions run high on wither sides of the table. Dave Franco’s second directorial venture is a refreshingly authentic take on self-discovery and introspection. Barring those faint reminders from My Best Friend's Wedding, Somebody I Used To Know uses an urban template to reinstate the universality of the proverb: “It’s never too late.”

REVIEW: Okay, the Brenden Fraser reference cracked me up a bit (from long before The Whale happened, of course). But I was still skeptical about the intent behind Somebody I Used To Know and had nearly mistaken it for another insipidly made Valentine’s Day money-minting tool for exploiting the most-abused emotion in the world, love. I am delighted to inform that I was wrong.

Co-written by Dave Franco and his lovely spouse Alison Brie, SIUTK beautifully captures the nothingness of a smalltown without berating it, while simultaneously dabbling in Instagrammable topics such as nudity clubs and the allure of hippie culture. Yes, it may be visually shocking to see people shooting and being shot stark naked but Brie’s coolness around nudity and her confidence in her own body is envy-level hot.

Raised by a single mother in the quaint town of Leaveworth, Ally wanted a career in Los Angeles making documentaries about subjects ‘people don’t really watch’. Sean (Jay Ellis), on the other hand, was a homebird and had the whole white-picket-fence dream chalked out with Ally (I think?). When dream meets contentment, one has to fly out the window. And out Ally went. But, despite the frivolous reality TV show Dessert Island, has she really done anything substantial in life? Before the pangs of separation hit you hard at midnight, on Valentine's Day, SIUTK throws another curveball at us, and through unlabored storytelling, makes one wonder—am I where I was supposed to be in life?

Widely different from his debut work in the direction space (The Rental, if you are asking), Dave Franco’s maturity and honesty in painting a rather candid picture of life and relationships translate on the big screen without any major glitches. The film, more inclined towards being a pick-me-up then a drown-in-love sort of narrative, has you laugh at jokes otherwise deemed culturally inappropriate and racist. The white penis joke, for instance. Sure, it caves in to the current dialogue circling inclusivity and sexuality but never shoulders the responsibility of changing the world within the designated one hour and 45 minutes of its run time. That being said, the story had some of the trappings of a run-of-the-mill coming-of-age mumbo jumbo but the actors never let it tread in that direction beyond a point.

Haley Joel Osment’s Jeremy is a livewire and if you want to skip the film—up to you—but do watch the parts featuring this delightful actor. Second to none is Alison Brie: the comic timing, the wistful stares, and the ultimate realization... all of it flows through the writer-actor as if she were Ally. Maybe she is. Ellis’ Sean is textbook romcom material; minus the smile, he is just about alright.

Somebody I Used To Know cherry-picks the unrealistic expectations of youth and marries it to the rage of an older generation: one has lived and lost, while the other hasn’t lived at all.

VERDICT: For those seeking non-linear love stories and just general motivation to try out different things in life, or even love, SIUTK is a more than decent place to start.