Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Somebody I Used to Know’ on Amazon Prime Video, a Poignant Comedy Vehicle for Alison Brie

Husband-and-wife team Alison Brie and Dave Franco team up again for Somebody I Used to Know (now on Amazon Prime Video): she stars, he directs, both write. Their previous collabo was 2020 horror film The Rental; they shift gears this time for an offbeat quasi-romantic comedy about a reality-TV showrunner who returns to her quaint hometown to visit her mom but ends up staring down the barrel of some serious regrets.

SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Dessert Island is on the cusp of being canceled. It’s a competition show about people who make cupcakes or whatever and have sex with each other or whatever. It’s not entirely clear how those things fit together, not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, or in any scheme of things, for that matter. Ally (Brie) runs the show, interviewing participants using a sure-fire technique where she lets an uncomfortable silence hang in the air until the interviewee spills their guts. Her goal was to be a documentary filmmaker, but this is where she ended up, and now she’s sorta famous for it. She kinda owns it and kinda feels embarrassed about it, although that’s not entirely clear – that’s just me reading into it. But now the stupid-ass show is kaput and, being a workaholic, she finds herself with nothing to do except go home to her cat and a bottle of clear liquor. 

It eventually becomes kinda, sorta obvious that she works and works and works and works to avoid getting lost inside her own head. Her psychological status comes into focus when she returns to the whimsical mountainside village of Leavenworth, Washington, her hometown, to visit her mom (Julie Hagerty), who frequently engages in lusty endeavors with Ally’s former third-grade teacher. They’re quite shameless about it, too. Ally keeps walking in on them and it’s like, ugh. She darts out the door to the local watering hole and who shows up but Sean (Jay Ellis), her old flame. They end up hanging out all night, being silly, having a few beverages, eating gigantic baked pretzels and shooting the cheese dip, and catching up and talking and feeling that old spark. She passionately kisses him good night but he deflects further advances because, well, she’s not here to stay, which is something that happened 10 years ago when he wanted to live in Leavenworth and she wanted to chase her dreams of being a documentarian in L.A. So it goes.

But Ally just can’t let go of the wonderful feeling of that all-nighter. She drops by Sean’s place and it’s a big dinner with his family and friends, many of them old compadres who are thrilled to see her again, like Sean’s nutball brother Jeremy (Haley Joel Osment), his BFF Benny (Danny Pudi). Sean’s mother JoJo (Olga Merediz) implores her to stay and she fits right in, like old times. It’s a bit awkward, as you’d expect, but she powers through and sits down for dinner and then there’s a toast to the bride and groom, and Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons) is the bride and Sean is the groom. He looks a bit sheepish. Ally extracts herself but then she doesn’t and JoJo talks her into being the videographer for tomorrow’s tubing trip down the river, and the rehearsal dinner, and the spa day, and then the wedding. She agrees. And then decides that she needs to lightly meddle with the happy couple, because Sean didn’t even MENTION his wife-to-be during their fun night together. Oh, and it turns out he knew she was in town and purposely sought her out. Maybe there’s some there there, and therefore Ally just might be able to put a decade of melancholy dissatisfaction behind her – but she might have to really eff with someone’s wedding in order to do it.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Brie shows similar commitment to character and oddball charm in weirdo 2020 movie Horse Girl.

Performance Worth Watching: Kudos to Brie for being a complicated protagonist, and unafraid to be prickly or selfish or conflicted – or more to the point, imperfect, unlike so many eager-to-please lead performances in so many other comedies.  

Memorable Dialogue: Benny sort of becomes Ally’s reluctant confidant, her man on the inside, and she pumps him for intel on Sean’s emotional state:

Ally: I need to see this through, whatever it is.

Benny: You mean with you and Sean. You and the groom.

Ally: We can just call him Sean.

Sex and Skin: Ally’s mom scrumps with Teacher Guy, but we only see his butt. There’s also a running thing about Ally being a former nudist, and she indulges the urge to drop trou in a couple scenes.

Our Take: Put yourself in Ally’s shoes. Would you be able to just let it go, to walk away from Sean and all his mixed messages? The only way for her to suss out the truth of the situation is to tag along with the wedding party, and plot and scheme a little – but not as much as a plotter and schemer might plot and scheme in a crappy big-name rom-com – and accidentally become friends with the bride, and become privy to her emotional state. And therein lies the crux of Ally’s complicated feelings: She sees a whole lot of herself in Cassidy, who’s giving up being a touring musician to stay in Leavenworth with Sean. I mean, her band opened for Sleater-Kinney, which is not nothing.

Somebody I Used to Know is very much a vehicle for Brie, who riffs on a new, more believable version of the stereotype character, the Woman Who Wants It All. Ally chose a career over love, establishing her independence at the expense of her heart. But as she immerses herself into the wedding-party endeavors, her duplicity becomes entangled with her empathy, and the offbeat quasi-rom-com becomes more of a poignant character study. We’re angry with her for meddling, we sympathize with her loneliness, we’re not sure how we feel about her, but that’s OK, because characters who are too easy to pigeonhole are boring.

Franco and Brie take pains to render the broadstroked elements of Ally’s wedding-wrecking endeavor in a subtle manner – Ally’s in something of a hey-I’m-just-asking-questions mode, and it turns out, some of the answers might be relevant to the parties involved. The film leans a little more toward quirky-indie sensibilities, while still indulging the stray outsized supporting character (Osment as an endearingly obnoxious goon) or cat-puke gag. Ultimately, none of the shenanigans distract from the heart of the matter, which pumps warmly within Brie’s compelling performance.

Our Call: Somebody I Used to Know delivers a thoughtful blend of comedy and character. You’re not going to bust a gut or burst into tears, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a watch. STREAM IT.  

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.