Somebody I Used To Know (Prime Video)
Rating: ** ½
Although major OTT platforms producing their own feature film is a welcome move, at least in India, I am not too sure of this one justifying its existence , especially when weighed against the wealth of writing and acting talent that has gone into the borderline misfire.
The very talented Alison Brie co-wrote this surly rom-com with her husband Dave Franco who also directs the film. Alison plays a very Jane Austen kind of wily heroine who would rather break than make a relationship when it involves her ex, played by Jay Ellis, who just about scrapes it to the finishing line.
By the way, Ellis is Black. A fact that has no relevance to the plot. I don’t know how far colour blindness can take us into the inroads of ethnic inclusiveness. But when a couple is so distinctly different, racially and culturally,it does seem like the elephant in the room although everyone pretends it is not.
Ellis is Sean and Brie is Ally. They play college sweethearts in a small town who have now parted ways. She presumably left him to pursue a career on television in LA where after her show is shut down, she scampers back home for some comfort on the rebound.And… the rest is not quietly what we expect . But the unexpected is used here as a ploy to make Ally’s Austenian machinations palatable.
Quite often one catches the heroine being purposely scheming and nasty. And we don’t really care for her problems. Just as she is between jobs(we presume she is bright enough to move on) she decides to go home to her sexually active mother(Julie Hagerty) and romantically non-reactive ex-boyfriend.
This is a formulistic plot pretending not to be one. Some revved-up interest occurs when Sean’s fiancée Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons) joins the plot. She is a musician associated with a band and she is expected to give up her musical dreams after marriage. In other words , a convenient chink in the couple’s armour for Ally to penetrate.
The screenplay is unnecessarily topheavy,piling on circumstantial ‘providence’ to offset the heroine’s greyness. It is as if the breakup between her ex and his fiancée was foretold. Ally just happened to be there to do the needful.
In spite of a crazily compelling performance Alison Brie’s Ally comes across as more of a nuisance than evil. More an annoyance than an intruder, she is supposed to be a replica of Sean’ s fiancée.Someone Ally used to know: herself in her younger days. But not interesting enough for us to know, the way she was or the way she is.