There’s the old cliché about loving a performer so much you’d watch them read the phone book. That’s put somewhat to the test in I Used to Be Funny, a low-energy, unoriginal, and poorly crafted film boasting a lead performance by the always captivating Rachel Sennott. This movie, which I must stress is by no means anywhere in the neighborhood of good, at least steers clear of being pure agony because Sennott is a singular talent who can put a fresh spin on even the most rote material. From an academic point of view, it is almost worth viewing just to see how one person can carry an entire project on their back. Almost.
The Toronto-set independent film, written and directed by Ally Pankiw, who boasts well-regarded television credits like Black Mirror, The Great, and Shrill, contorts itself with narrative knots of flashbacks and flashforwards, which become all the more baffling when the central mystery is ultimately revealed to be… nothing all that shocking in a media landscape besotted with tales of gory true crime.
When we first meet Sam (Sennott), she is bed-rotting and crashing with two roommates (Sabrina Jalees and Caleb Hearon). They are working stand-up comedians, but Sam has hung up the mic due to some kind of incident. The trio’s breakfast-table badinage is mildly amusing, but there’s a dearth of any real laughs. Semmott, Jalees, and Haron all have really good timing, and still the material is surprisingly flat. I’m not kidding when I tell you that the best zing in the whole production was a riff on #TeamEdward vs. #TeamJacob. In 2024.
But the movie is called I Used to Be Funny, not I Am Funny, so clearly it’s the drama we should be focused on, yes? The problems start when Sam, needing a gig, agrees to be an au pair for young Brooke (Olga Petsa), who is supposed to be 12 but looks significantly older. Brooke’s mother is hospitalized and gravely ill, and her father Cameron (Jason Jones) needs a hand raising her. The family is super-loaded—the house has turrets, Brooke goes to what Sam jokingly refers to as Hogwarts—but Cameron is later revealed to be a cop. Do Canadian cops make that much? Maybe the mother is the wealthy one? Then again, two stand-ups can afford an apartment big enough to have a spare room for their traumatized pal to stay and mope for months on end. Should I move to Toronto? I guess this isn’t important, but the movie moves at such a snail’s pace you can’t help but start asking these questions.
Sam quickly differentiates herself as a “cool” au pair (she and Brooke both wince at the word “nanny”), and they form a real bond. These older-sister scenes have a breezy quality, with Sennott doing her thing, like warning about the embarrassing effects binge drinking can have on one’s bladder. Though this movie is miles from Bottoms, the comedy explosion in which she and Ayo Edibiri are teen Tasmanian devils ravaging the rules of typical high school comedies, she still brings a lightness to these sequences. Each line delivery has a bit of jazzy spin, some comic misdirection evident of a performer wholly in the moment, listening to her scene partner, and aware of how it will all come together in the final edit. The 28-year-old Sennott is a natural talent, and it’s only a matter of time before she cements herself with one of the all-time film performances. (Bottoms and her 2021 breakout Shiva Baby will have to suffice for now.)
I Used to Be Funny eventually gets bogged down in some courtroom nonsense, then arguably the least-scary drug dealer in movie history. There’s a moment when you think the story will head into an interesting direction—exploring the blowback that so many women experience when they make accusations after a sexual assault—but this doesn’t go anywhere. The script is more interested in playing hopscotch on the timeline and showing off more not-that-great clips from the comedy club. This is one that’s not worth the cover and the minimum.
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