“One of Them Days,” a buddy comedy about two Los Angeles roommates who have nine hours to make rent, is a treat to be gobbled up like pancakes at midnight. Fittingly, one of the heroines, Dreux (Keke Palmer), works the red-eye shift at the Norms restaurant on La Cienega. That humble 24-hour diner has been deemed a Historic-Cultural Monument. This too is the kind of casual crowd-pleaser that’s come to feel special: an R-rated hangout movie like “Friday” or “Smiley Face” that might once have been taken for granted but today whose very existence deserves applause.
Dreux and Alyssa (the Grammy-winning musician SZA) are pals who share a courtyard apartment in Baldwin Hills. One morning, their tightfisted landlord, Uche (Rizi Timane), insists that he never received that month’s $1,500. Keshawn (Joshua David Neal), Alyssa’s eye-poppingly endowed boyfriend, had the money; now, both he and it are gone. The f-boy has effed over the girls — they’ll be out on the curb by dusk unless they come up with some fast cash.
Director Lawrence Lamont and writer Syreeta Singleton hail from TV. (Singleton recently show-ran the series “Rap S—.”) But their debut feature swaggers with confidence through a brash and playful version of L.A. Genres are mashed together at will: western, action, romance, Grand Guignol. As the girls track Keshawn to the bedroom of his latest hookup, a clump of hair blows ominously across their path. “Tumbleweave,” Dreux mutters. A beat later, the other woman, Berniece (Aziza Scott), chases the pair down the street, her palms furiously slicing the air like the T-1000.
Everyday problems are hopped up on adrenaline. Alyssa imagines Berniece seducing worthless Keshawn in a twerking fantasia; ordering fast food at a drive-in, meanwhile, turns out to be a competitive sport. When the ladies try to secure a loan from a predatory payday chain (slogan: “We gotcha, we’ll getcha!”), the clerk (a hilarious Keyla Monterroso Mejia of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) gestures toward an advertised interest rate of 1900.5%. Gasps Dreux, “I thought that was the year of establishment!”
Nothing comes easy on the first of the month for people living paycheck to paycheck. As Deaux and Alyssa race around trying to scrape together enough dough to keep their home, we see other Angelenos staring nervously out their windows, hoping they won’t be next. The building’s courtyard boasts its own economy — an ecosystem, really — where the residents are united by the effort to get by. Mama Ruth (Vanessa Bell Calloway) sells snacks from her living room; Jameel (Dewayne Perkins) does hair by the stairs. Meanwhile, their AC is busted and the roof is about to collapse. Uche is eager to evict, renovate and gentrify. At the arrival of the complex’s first white resident, Bethany (Maude Apatow), Deaux shudders a Scooby-Doo-style “Ruh-roh.”
This shaggy, silly movie works because you want to be there wherever the leads fall splat on their faces: a blood bank, a brawl, an ambulance. SZA and Palmer make a fun pair. They’re not quite an odd couple — more like adjacent screwballs. SZA’s Alyssa is a bohemian who bops around in a daze with painted flowers on her car and stuffed animals on her shoes. Like the filmmakers, it’s also her first feature, and they’ve tailored the role to the singer-songwriter’s chillaxed comic timing.
Her wackadoo charisma is at ease in front of a camera. Back in her stoner days, SZA willingly played herself like a human cartoon. When she guest-starred on Lizzo’s dance competition show, “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” she sprawled on a couch with such slacker aplomb that I wouldn’t have blinked if she’d pulled a slice of pizza out of her pocket. Here as Alyssa, she pulls off abrupt pivots, exiting one scene with the non sequitur “Is that a pigeon?”
Palmer’s Dreux is the pragmatic one, a worn-out worker-bot with frayed wiring. She can be charming and awkward in the same twitch. Whenever Dreux bumps into her neighborhood crush, Maniac (Patrick Cage), a hunk with a dubious reputation and an ax in his Mercedes, she completely goes on the fritz. Her ambitions have a toehold in reality — she dreams of someday managing a Norms franchise — so it’s no shock that her big job interview is scheduled that very afternoon. What is astonishing is that we manage to get invested in her career, despite plotting that goes from cheekily contrived to absurd.
A few of the narrative ends are frazzled. In the opening scene, the radio DJ Big Boy cautions that today’s weather will be a scorcher; meanwhile, we see images of people wearing jackets, and the heat never gets brought up again. (For those headed to the theater this weekend to escape the actual ash in the sky, brace for a scene with a dangerous fire.) Don’t expect the script to justify how Palmer comes to spend a third of the movie encased in lime-green mesh spandex like “a thick praying mantis,” or the series of unfortunate events that results in the two friends fleeing for their lives from the local gangster, King Lolo, who executes his victims by dropping them from a parking garage. The King Lolo character is introduced with such mysterious fanfare, you’ll assume the casting is a wacky celebrity stunt. Instead, it’s just a very good Amin Joseph playing his scenes straight-faced.
The soundtrack is solid (Saweetie, GloRilla and a track by Palmer over the closing credits), and the images have none of that dishwatery cheapness that’s crept into too many of the last remaining contemporary comedies. Occasionally, cinematographer Ava Berkofsky allows herself a flourish, like a split-screen gag that gets a good giggle, or a tiny send-up of the aesthetics of online selling. (Picture a pair of Air Jordans assembled like a da Vinci tablescape.)
Still, the ensemble is the main reason to go. Lil Rel Howery and Katt Williams are the best-known names in the supporting cast, but you leave raving about bit parts played by such rising talents as Scott, Mejia and Janelle James as a stripper-turned-nurse. Lamont trusts his movie is personality-powered. He’s calibrated each performance to fit together like a 12-piece band, and he knows that some jokes are even funnier when whispered. But I’m in the mood to speak up: I’ve missed this type of satisfying junk food. Waiter, bring me another.
