‘I Used to Be Funny’ Encapsulates Rachel Sennott’s Versatile Appeal

Popular comedians almost always reach a point where they’ll try their hand at something a little more serious, and lately, it seems to happen earlier and earlier. Rachel Sennott may be the internet’s biggest comedy crush and have plenty of experience as a stand-up, TV performer, and all-around scene-stealer, but she’s appeared in a total of five feature films, only one of which – last summer’s delightful Bottoms – was an unadulterated wide-release comedy. Now, for her sixth film, Sennott is starring in something altogether more harrowing – and, for a comic performer trying drama, perfectly titled. I Used to Be Funny could be the self-deprecating memoir title of any number of formerly hilarious comedians.

In this case, the comedian in question has barely gotten started before she becomes the victim of a paralyzing crime. Though it’s not shown directly until later in the movie, we come to realize that Sam (Sennott) has been reeling in the aftermath of a sexual assault, suffering from depression and PTSD. Once an au pair for a teenager while gigging at local Toronto comedy clubs in the evening, Sam has been thrown into further disarray upon learning that Brooke (Olga Petsa), the young charge who had become like a little sister to her, has disappeared.

A tighter and slightly more focused movie might have zeroed in on Sam actively searching for Brooke, who she briefly saw just before she went missing, becoming the story of a young woman tracking down her surrogate family member despite the obvious, not immediately stated estrangement between them. It even feels like that may have been the idea in some version of this screenplay, as Sam’s friends make reference to her fixating on Brooke’s disappearance in a way that doesn’t quite match her actual observable behavior. (The movie makes a convincing argument that it’s difficult for anyone else to fully understand the mental experience of someone in Sam’s position, so to then have her friends understand so clearly how much she’s thinking about Brooke doesn’t fully make sense.) When Sam does set out to find Brooke late in the film, the scenes exude genuine danger, desperation, and bits of dark humor.

Before it gets to that point, the movie attempts to illustrate Sam’s headspace, jumping around in time to reveal aspects of her relationship with Brooke as well as her now-stalled comedy career. Contrary to its title (or maybe perfectly fitting its ruefulness), I Used to Be Funny has plenty of laughs. It’s funny in a rare and delicate way: Writer-director Ally Pankiw simultaneously communicates the pathology of a professional comedian driven to joke their way through uncomfortable situations, the fact that some comedians are genuinely quite good at this (hence the actual laughs, rather than the brutal imitations of comedy you sometimes get in movies about comedians), and, finally, how paralyzing it can be to lose that ability in times of unimaginable strife. It’s a complicated strategy that avoids trauma-movie wallowing and allows Sennott to explore the murky area between ha-ha funny and oh-yikes funny.

A major reason any of this works as well as it does is Sennott herself – though she’s notably better in the scenes where Sam is barely concealing her pain, rather than confronting it directly. It’s not that Sennott lacks dramatic skill, or that this catharsis isn’t necessary; it’s just that the pricklier, less straightforward stuff dovetails with the best of her movie work so far. In Shiva Baby, where her character accidentally brings chaos to the shiva for a family friend, the movie’s intense anxiety and humor are inextricable from each other. Even in broader stuff like Bodies Bodies Bodies and Bottoms, her comedy comes from the emotional rawness that she tries and fails to conceal: The hurt over her friends “hate-listening” to her podcast in Bodies, or the insecurity-masking horny bravado of her sexual questing in Bottoms.

Her physicality is perfectly engineered for these kind of layers. Her wonderfully distinctive voice, for example, often sounds as if it’s about to crack from overuse, both undermines her more confident pronouncements and makes them memorable through her inimitable tone, and her diminutive stature suggests a kind if permanent scrappiness required to make her way through the world. She has a kind of pinup-parody vibe, crystallized early in I Used to Be Funny when she rouses herself to take a shower (a major achievement for her depressed character) and promptly curls back up in bed wearing a damp towel. It’s both indicative of her fragile mental state and, outside of that context, kind of adorable.

This isn’t to trivialize or objectify the movie’s serious subject matter, which Pankiw explores in a thoughtful and contemporary manner. But it’s also true that Sennott is most expressive when she’s reveling in clashing, seemingly contradictory emotions; when she and the movie get more conventional, it plays more like a natural comic tamping down their talent. The most compelling, even weirdly inspiring, thing about I Used to Be Funny is watching Sennott’s funny side wriggle its way back to the surface through some messy, imperfect healing. The movie doesn’t suggest that she has a future as a serious actor so much as illustrate that she is one already.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.