Here are some facts about One of Them Days, the Keke Palmer/SZA buddy comedy that just hit Netflix following a successful theatrical run earlier this year: It is the fourth-highest-grossing 2025 movie at the North American box office (as of this writing), having made more than movies starring Mark Wahlberg, Gerard Butler, Cate Blanchett, and the wolf man. Also, its $50 million domestic makes it the highest-grossing broad comedy (that is, not combining comedy with animation, visual effects, action, and so on) since 2023, when Anyone But You and No Hard Feelings (also Sony productions) both hit. In fact, One of Them Days performed very similarly to the well-reviewed crowd-pleaser No Hard Feelings – only it cost vastly less, just as it cost less than any other hit 2025 movie so far.
So is Keke Palmer, whose first blush of fame came with her kid performance in Akeelah and the Bee, now a draw on the level of Jennifer Lawrence? SZA surely added some marquee value to One of Them Days but it’s also her first movie ever, and the film is more rooted in Palmer’s character’s point of view. It feels like the belated follow-up to Palmer’s turn in the Jordan Peele sci-fi horror film Nope, a big hit back in 2022. In fact, it is the belated follow-up to that movie; Palmer’s only movie roles between the two films were a voice-acting performance in a little-seen animated feature called Under the Boardwalk, and a mugging cameo role in Jennifer Lopez’s deeply strange made-for-streaming sorta-feature This Is Me Now… A Love Story.
That’s not to say that Palmer hasn’t kept busy. She’s hosted two seasons of the game-show revival Password on NBC, voiced leading roles in three different animated series, and released an album called Big Boss in 2023. You may also have seen her in ads for a Monopoly mobile game alongside Chris Pratt and Jason Momoa, inspiring you to ask what the hell three major stars are doing in such a low-rent enterprise. Honestly, that question could be applied to a number of Palmer’s gigs; she still (perhaps understandably) takes jobs like a former child actress, wary that the work could dry up at any moment. The number of things this woman has hosted, guest-starred, or guest-judged on over the years!
Her performance in Nope capitalizes on that hustling energy; her character Em is like a more feckless version of Palmer, with less glamorous showbiz connections. Instead of booking sitcoms and MTV hosting, she halfheartedly helps to run a horse-training business that provides the animals for film productions, while also dabbling in costumes and catering. When she and her more taciturn brother OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) work together to capture footage of a UFO, she’s invigorated with a sense of purpose; Palmer makes Em charming, inventive, and a little flaky, complementing Kaluuya’s work perfectly.
The working-it aesthetic is clearly a major part of Palmer’s self-image. One of These Days follows her character Dreux through a series of Los Angeles mishaps as she and her artist roommate Alyssa (SZA) try to recover some stolen rent money for their shabby apartment, pay their strict landlord, and get Dreux to a job interview that could promote her out of waitressing and into management. In a movie full of outsized broad-comedy moments, Palmer has plenty of opportunities to overact, to turn on the kid-star hamminess that’s part of her persona. But in a real flex, some of the biggest laughs in the movie come from her smallest line readings. (“He knew how to clean this whole time,” she mutters after Alyssa’s live-in boyfriend absconds with their rent money and manages to take all of his belongings with him.) She carries the movie with cheerful ease that nonetheless doesn’t deny her character some emotional grounding.
So is this Palmer’s star moment? She’s been beloved for years, and Nope felt like enough of a breakout that Password, et. al, felt like something of a holding pattern. (To be fair, she was supposed to appear in Aziz Ansari’s Being Mortal, which would have been her big-screen follow-up to Nope, but the production was shut down after receiving a harassment complaint due to co-star Bill Murray.) She’s next scheduled to appear in Ansari’s next film; a heist comedy from Tim Story; and the next film from Sorry to Bother You’s Boots Riley.
It’s telling that none of these films are a straight-up mainstream comedy like Days – telling, that is, in terms of how infrequently those movies get made. For years, unadorned comedies provided the box office with a steady stream of stars like Adam Sandler and Melissa McCarthy, folks who might not ascend to Will Smith levels of cross-genre spectacle, but could perform like clockwork on low-cost movies. Palmer has certainly labored to prove herself as a modern multiplatform star – movies! TV! Music! Ads for low-rent mobile games! – but One of Them Days suggests that she could simplify her way into major big-screen stardom.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others.
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