Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Someone Great’ on Netflix, A Rom-Com For When Love Isn’t Enough

Someone Great on Netflix is a romantic comedy for every person who knows that while romantic love is a beautiful thing, it’s also not the only thing. From the creator of the tragically short-lived MTV drama Sweet/Vicious, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the film stars Gina Rodriguez as a young romantic named Jenny and LaKeith Stanfield as her long-term, loving boyfriend Nate. Unfortunately for both of them, sometimes true love just isn’t enough. 

SOMEONE GREAT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jenny (Rodriguez) is a New York journalist in her mid-twenties who has just been dumped by her boyfriend of nine years, Nate (Stanfield). Nate was unwilling to do long-distance: Jenny landed her dream job—an editor at Rolling Stone—but has to move to San Francisco to take it. Heartbroken, Jenny turns to her two best friends, Erin (DeWanda Wise) and Blair (Brittany Snow) to take her mind off the pain with a wild night out at a music festival. Meanwhile, Erin and Blair have their own shit to deal with—Erin’s afraid to get serious with her girlfriend (Rebecca Naomi Jones) while Blair is cheating on her dorky boyfriend (Alex Moffat).

As the girls smoke and reminisce and attempt to secure backstage passes, we see the story of Jenny and Nate’s relationship via flashback. It was clearly a good one: This was real love, the kind you write songs about. Nate and Jenny worked. They loved each other, even after they broke up. But in the end—spoiler alert—they don’t get back together. Instead, Jenny accepts that this chapter in her life has come to a close, and moves on, ready to face the future.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: As adorable as Stanfield and Rodriguez are together, the real emotional core of the film is the friendship between Jenny, Blair and Erin, who are hilarious—so the titles that come to mind are Bridesmaids and Broad City. The drug-induced antics, the millennial lit-AF lingo and the running around New York City certainly felt very Abbi-and-Ilana. On the romance front, it 500 Days of Summer (a film I love), but the feminine energy version of that. 

Performance Worth Watching: Much love to Rodriguez and Stanfield, but I have to give this one to Brittany Snow as the type-A Blair (or, when she drinks “Bad Blair.”) I’ve loved Snow since Pitch Perfect, and while her character here is not dissimilar from that one, she nails the quiet simmer of a “nice girl” who’s actually Fed Up. DeWanda Wise, too, known for the She’s Gotta Have It series, made me laugh a lot with her flawless delivery.

Memorable Dialogue: Not quite dialogue, but written by Jenny in her journal as she finally says goodbye to the idea of her and Nate: “When something breaks, if the pieces are large enough, you can fix it. Unfortunately, sometimes things don’t break, they shatter. But when you let the light in, shattered glass will glitter.”

Single Best Shot: A sweet moment when Jenny and Nate kiss at “their spot” in Washington Square Park.

Sex and Skin: Jenny and Nate do indeed get it on, but we don’t see any nudity.  Stanfield does have a very nice chest, though.

Our Take: Someone Great is a great film that’s not flashy about its greatness. The chemistry between Rodriguez, Snow and Wise as besties—and between all the characters they interact with—feels so natural that you forget that kind of thing takes effort. There are a million moving parts greasing that well-oiled machine, from the script to casting to acting to directing, and as a first time director, Robinson came through on all of those things with impressive prowess. What struck me most was the authenticity: Jenny’s experience is not mine, but I absolutely felt the truth that this is someone’s story, somewhere. It helped that her friends sounded like my friends and that her New York looked like my New York. That world is real. (Credit too, for that, to cinematographer Autumn Eakin, production designer Lisa Myers and costume designer Stacey Battat.)

The film’s unobtrusive nature may be mistaken for inconsequential��it is, in some ways, a fairly standard indie rom-com—but don’t overlook the ways it’s revolutionary, too. Robinson has a message for viewers that we so rarely see in this genre: Just because the love story is perfect doesn’t mean you’ll live happily ever after.

Our Call: STREAM IT. This a film perfect for lovers of romantic comedies: you’ll laugh, cry and experience some serious emotional catharsis. And if you’re not a big rom-com fan, check it out anyhow—this film gets that, too.

Stream Someone Great on Netflix