One of Them Days

One of Them Days is genuinely funny. Keke Palmer and SZA have the kind of chemistry that cannot be manufactured by a casting director - the loose, improvisational, finishing-each-other's-sentences energy of a friendship that reads as real even when the script is obviously engineered. For a debut feature from director Lawrence Lamont and first-time feature screenwriter Syreeta Singleton, the comic craft is impressively consistent.

It is also, by our scoring system, a MIXED film with a slight woke lean. Not a disaster. Not a lecture. Not a film that wants you to change your values. But loaded with one central assumption that conservative viewers should name clearly: that men - specifically, the men in these women's lives - are the problem, and women who escape male dependency are the solution.

Let us deal with the comedy first, because it is real.

Dreux (Palmer) is a waitress fighting for a job as a franchise manager. Alyssa (SZA) is an aspiring artist whose boyfriend Keshawn has been stealing their rent money to fund his T-shirt business. When their landlord demands $1,500 by 6 PM or they are evicted, the film becomes a pressure-cooker comedy of escalating disasters: a blood donation center catastrophe, an Air Jordan heist from a utility pole that ends with electrocution, a backyard art gallery organized in two hours, a confrontation with the gangster whose shoes they accidentally sold. The comic timing is sharp. Katt Williams in a supporting role as a recurring neighborhood figure has a delivery so precise that every line lands like a guided missile.

SZA, in her film debut, is a natural. She has the physical comedian's gift for committing fully to absurdity - the electrocution sequence, in particular, is executed with the kind of total-body performance commitment that most trained actors cannot manufacture. The instinct that makes a great performer in one medium does not always transfer; in SZA's case, it does.

But the ideological machinery underneath the comedy is worth examining.

Every major male character in this film is either absent, useless, or actively predatory. Keshawn steals from his girlfriend and then tries to win her back with candles in the apartment he got her evicted from. The landlord Uche is petty and inflexible. King Lolo is a gangster threat. The only male figure who reads as genuinely warm is Maniac - the man Dreux is briefly flirting with - and his function in the plot is to drive her to rescue Alyssa from a utility pole and then disappear. The film has no positive male role models, no father figures, no male mentors. The world of One of Them Days is a world where women succeed despite men, not alongside them.

This is not a new pattern in Hollywood comedy - it is the template that has dominated the genre since at least Bridesmaids - but it is a template, and it carries an ideology. The ideology is: male dependence is the problem. Female self-sufficiency is the solution. That is a coherent worldview. It is not the traditional one.

The film also contains significant profanity (rated R), some crude humor involving bodily functions (the blood donation sequence), and a brief altercation involving property destruction. None of this is concealed; the R rating communicates it clearly.

For conservative viewers, the honest verdict is this: One of Them Days is funnier than most studio comedies released in the last five years. The chemistry between Palmer and SZA is something special. If you can watch a film that treats male characters as punchlines without it ruining your experience, you will have a good time. If that pattern bothers you - and it reasonably might - the film will not change your mind, because it is not trying to. It is simply a world where men cause problems and women solve them.

The traditional elements are real too. Dreux's work ethic is genuine and rewarded. Alyssa's artistic ambition is treated seriously. Female friendship as a stabilizing force - the film's true subject - is handled with warmth and specificity. Accountability comes for Keshawn, even if it comes comically rather than consequentially.

MIXED is the right verdict. This is a film that can be genuinely enjoyed by conservative audiences who go in clear-eyed about what it is. It is not trying to convert anyone. It is just telling the story from its own angle.

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Male Incompetence as Comic Engine / Deadbeat Boyfriend	3	High	High	3.78
Female Self-Sufficiency as Aspirational	2	Moderate	Moderate	2
Women Solving Problems Without Male Assistance	2	High	Moderate	1.4
TOTAL WOKE				7.2

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Female Friendship as Primary Bond	2	Moderate	Moderate	2
Work Ethic and Ambition Rewarded	2	Moderate	Moderate	2
Accountability for Bad Behavior	2	Moderate	Low	1
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				5.0

Score Margin: -2 WOKE