Someone Great (2019)

Someone Great arrives from Netflix with the modest ambitions of a hangover comedy and the emotional register of a eulogy for a nine-year relationship. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson writes and directs her own debut, which is itself a quiet statement, and she hands Gina Rodriguez the role of Jenny, a music journalist who lands her dream job at Rolling Stone and loses her boyfriend in the same week. The plot is a single day of drinking, ticket-hunting, and crying in public restrooms. It is a female friendship story told without apology, and the friendship is the point.

The casting is diverse in the casual manner of contemporary New York, with Black co-leads and a Latina protagonist sharing scenes as though the city had always looked this way. Erin's arc, in which she avoids her girlfriend Leah before finally admitting what she wants, treats queerness as ordinary life instead of a teaching moment. Blair's breakup unfolds with similar restraint. None of this is announced. There is no scene in which a character explains the theme to the audience, which is a rarer virtue than it ought to be.

Where the film scores low is where most breezy romcoms score low. It has no interest in climate, class, body image, or neurodivergence. It offers no historical revision, because it has no history to revise. Its politics are the politics of a good playlist and a long night out. Whether that constitutes a failure depends on what we ask of a movie about three women saying goodbye. The film answers with a shrug and a Lizzo needle drop, and honestly, that is enough.