One of Them Days (2025)

A Black enclave in L.A. thrives on laughs and a resilient sense of community

One of Them Days (2025)

In theaters

In Los Angeles in the mid-1960s I lived near Baldwin Hills, a residential region in the southern tier of the city.

Homes there were palatially large in the uppermost reaches, but just below these heights, row upon row of two- and three-story apartment complexes housed an edgy middle class straining for a foothold in Southern California paradise.

Baldwin Hills, which represented an economic step up from struggling South Central L.A., was rapidly becoming predominantly Black, and its residents giddily, defiantly called their enclave of the city “The Jungle”. Its abundance of palm trees wasn’t the only reason.

That name which sounds like a slur actually was in part an unembarrassed assertion of racial identity. It declared to whites, yes, there are lots of us Blacks here. If you come, show some respect. To Blacks it sent another message. If you can pay the rent, move on up, you certainly won’t feel lonely.

The ’60s and ’70s may have been The Jungle’s heyday, yet I was delighted to discover in One of Them Days that its culture of hardscrabble solidarity has endured (there’s even a shoutout to my old high school).

True, in subsequent years violent gangs, structures teetering toward collapse, pockets of poverty and corrupt policing – it’s where Denzel’s dirty L.A. cop meets his takedown in Training Day (2001) – all seemed to threaten a kind of blight.

But by the evidence of this freewheeling romp, a neighborhood bond thrives in The Jungle today.

No doubt money has gotten even tighter and household amenities can be a joke. In the apartment we see shared by Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) the ceiling’s plaster is falling in clumps, and they can’t remember when the AC worked.

But immediate crises can urgently mess with your head. On the day we meet these roommates and best friends it’s the first of the month, their rent is due, and the landlord announces they’ll be evicted and their furniture moved to the curb if they don’t pay up by 6:00 p.m. Both women are broke, so the clock is ticking.

Dreux is an ambitious server at a hamburger joint and she’s already passed the rent money along to Alyssa, who insists she paid it.

Not true. She actually “loaned” it to her shiftless boyfriend Keshawn (Joshua David Neal), who’s trying to become a style arbiter. He’s sunk all the rent cash into knockoff “trendy” T-shirts he doesn’t know how to sell.

If scrounging for the rent weren’t enough pressure, Dreux is booked for a crucial 4:00 p.m. job interview that could make her a franchise manager. With no cash in hand, within hours she’s got to get her hair beautified and buy an impressive outfit.

Alyssa is a talented painter, and the apartment is scattered with her canvases. But at the moment none of them are selling, so, how do you scare up discriminating art collectors – able to pay cash – in a matter of hours?

Director Lawrence Lamont and screenwriter Syreeta Singleton make sure this tick-tock set up generates enough warmth and free-floating energy to keep the movie’s rhythms fleet and velvety. It’s a traditional buddy comedy, with the bedrock of a community struggling to thrive.

None of the gags or screw-ups go on too long, though some are less funny than others, and before any misstep or setback drags, we’re quickly on to the next.

They include selling blood, putting a pair of classic Air Jordans up for sale and applying for a payday loan relying on Alyssa’s laughably low credit score. Janelle James (of TV’s Abbott Elementary) shows up in a nifty cameo extracting blood in her first day on the job.

And Katt Williams strikes comedy gold in the role of Lucky, a street drifter who warns the two women that if they don’t have money now, they probably won’t have it when payback time rolls around.

The frenzy here may be exhilarating, but it’s not smart to trifle with neighborhood regulars. Keshawn’s scary other girlfriend (Aziza Scott) comes for revenge when the duo humiliates her. And when a local thug (Amin Joseph) shows up brandishing a gun Dreux and Alyssa realize they’ll need their neighbors’ help to outsmart him.

Charmingly, the community comes through. One of the script’s strategies is that amidst the mayhem, the threats of violence prove cartoonishly easy to deflect.

And when Bethany (Maude Apatow), a sweetly naïve well-off white woman moves in, she proves to be not just amiable but resourceful. Empathy doesn’t have a class or a color.

What I found most exciting about this modest movie is that it creates a string of promising interactions and introduces quirky characters I wanted to see more of. It’s pleasant to slowly grasp that the script’s slam-bam reversals interlock in a way that hints at a sequel.

Palmer and SZA’s exquisite timing in the interplay between two women keeping their friendship together brings the moral of the story home: alone we can get sidetracked, together we can kick whatever’s in our way out of our way.

All the people we see have more tests they seem ready to pass. Society may have counted them down and out, but in the end, they manage to turn not on but to one another.

It may have seemed in recent years that encircled outposts in the Black community like this one promise little more than a wan hope, as solid as crumbling plaster, if you will.

But here we learn that in The Jungle hope and growth can be revived despite missed opportunities and moments of doubt.

Though the street language here is rougher, and the flavor raunchier, this movie reminded me of the springy, easygoing hustle of two Michael Schultz-directed classics, Cooley High (1975) and Car Wash (1976).

I want to see more life-affirming days like the one set out here. I think Lamont and Singleton have it in them to come up with fresh teases, puzzles and pranks. And they’ve assembled a game cast who seem primed for more action.

After the climax, as the cleverly illustrated end credits rolled, I couldn’t quite buy that the story was completely over. It felt like it was also taking root.