Netflix’s new comedy Someone Great is an ode to love, heartbreak and female friendships.
The film follows best friends – Jenny Young (Gina Rodriguez), Blair Helms (Brittany Snow) and Erin Kennedy (DeWanda Wise) – as they figure out how to grow up together and apart.
Jenny is an aspiring music journalist in New York City who just landed her dream job at Rolling Stone, which requires her to move across the country to California, stirring up tension in her relationship. Eventually, she and her long-term boyfriend, Nate Davis (LaKeith Stanfield), break up.
Sarah Shatz/Netflix
Meanwhile, Blair is bored in her relationship and finds herself seeking adventure with a college friend (and Jenny’s former crush), Matt Lasher (Peter Vack) and Erin is having trouble committing to her girlfriend.
For the three, this meant figuring out how they fit into each other’s lives.
The aftermath of the breakup between Jenny and Nate becomes the plot of the movie. The first 10-minutes goes from showing the bright and affectionate couple joking about their future family to a tear-filled Jenny with smudged eyeliner sipping booze and crying to a stranger while they wait for the subway.
Flashbacks are prevalent throughout the movie. A certain song takes Jenny back to the night she first met her ex, a Diet Coke reminds her of late nights stocking up at a bodega and the fountain at Washington Square Park reminds her of the time in college when they made it their spot by writing it in black sharpie.
With all of this gone, she relies on her friends to take her mind off the heartbreak, and they embark on a journey filled with an awkward encounter with Davis’ snarky cousin (Rosario Dawson), meeting Hype (Rupaul) for expensive molly and stealing Beyoncé-level weed from an eccentric dealer all while trying to secure tickets to the Neon Classic.
Someone Great explores the vulnerability and nostalgia that accompanies letting go of familiarity before being able to move on to something better.
The best part of the movie was not the star-studded cameos or hearing Rodriguez, Snow, and Wise harmonize to “Dreaming of You” by Selena; the best part of the movie was the authenticity of the portrayal of the raw emotion that goes along with undergoing major life changes.
Sarah Shatz / Netflix
At surface level, the film is about surviving a breakup. But to say that does not give the writer and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson enough credit.
Someone Great explores the vulnerability and nostalgia that accompanies letting go of familiarity before being able to move on to something better.
In Jenny’s case, this meant moving on from her break up, moving on to a new life and job in California and not relying on her friends to put her back together. For Blair, this meant letting go of her rigid life plan and following her heart instead of her head. For Erin, it meant letting go of her reservations and allowing herself to feel again- whether it was love or loss.
For the three, this meant figuring out how they fit into each other’s lives.
Sarah Shatz / Netflix
An hour and a half of personal revelations lead them all back to the Washington Square Park fountain. This is the ribbon at the end of the movie that ties everything together. The three friends find themselves changed. Problems that seemed unfixable in the first thirty minutes of the movie are now an afterthought.
Through all the drunken missteps and nasty fighting that only best friends can get through, the trio’s friendship is a testament to how the best friendships evolve with age and personal growth lies in the unknown.
Someone Great is now available on Netflix.
Featured Image Credit: Netflix
