Somebody I Used to Know movie review: Alison Brie’s aggravating rom-com is neither romantic nor funny

At the bar on her first day back, she runs into her old boyfriend Sean, played by Jay Ellis. After an awkward exchange that the movie is convinced is at par with Celine and Jesse’s reunion at the start of Before Sunset, Ally and Sean go on an overnight escapade, during which old sparks reignite. Or so Ally thinks. Because when she moves in for a kiss, Sean begins to act suspicious and backs off. And for good reason; Ally discovers the following day that he’s literally hours away from getting married to a young hippie named Cassie.

Presented with the option of shrugging her shoulders and nonchalantly carrying on with her life, or momentarily feeling sad about a problem that she didn’t know she had 24 hours ago, Ally chooses neither. Instead, she convinces herself that Sean is on the fence about Cassie, and makes the singularly confounding decision to sabotage their relationship. This comes out of nowhere.

The movie doesn’t properly establish why she’s so infatuated with Sean in the first place. We’re meant to believe that she ran into him after a gap of 10 years — we never saw her pining for him prior to their reunion — and in a matter of hours became so obsessed that she decided to ruin his life for entirely selfish reasons. She genuinely just showed up back home, and he just happened to be at the bar at the same time as her. A story like this needed to have a more convincing inciting incident; it shouldn’t have to hinge on a chance encounter.

It gets weirder. Sean’s fiancé takes an understandably offensive position against this unexpected intrusion, when she notices Ally at private pre-wedding functions. Cassie’s visible displeasure only makes Ally more convinced about her hunch that she isn’t right for Sean. What this means is that in the year 2023, we’re watching a movie in which two women are pitted against each other as they fight for the same man. To the Somebody I Used to Know’s credit, it doesn’t quite follow through with this train of thought for more than 15 minutes, but this doesn’t mean that it subverts genre expectations in any satisfying way. If anything, the ending is almost anticlimactic — partially because it’s impossible to form a connection with any of these characters, but also because the film keeps second guessing its own premise after every other scene.

Does it condone Ally’s borderline stalker-y behaviour? Yes, it does. It expects you to root for her and Sean, who, by the way, isn’t made to stand trial for leading her on. This would have been an engaging examination of morally questionable behaviour, had the writing been smarter. It’s almost as if Franco is wilfully ignoring some of the more enticing avenues that the narrative could have taken. There was an opportunity here to create something sadder, more stinging, more aware of the millennial experience. But Somebody I Used to Know makes a very feeble case for itself; there’s little here to recommend.

Somebody I Used to Know
Director – Dave Franco
Cast – Alison Brie, Jay Ellis, Kiersey Clemons, Haley Joel Osment, Danny Pudi, Julie Hagerty, Amy Sedaris
Rating – 1/5