If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard of the “incredible” new movie on Netflix, I’m here to introduce you to Someone Great. It stars Gina Rodriguez, Brittany Snow, and DeWanda Wise, and follows Rodriguez’s character, Jenny, and her two friends, as they navigate through the first day after Jenny’s 9-year relationship ends.
(This is where I’m going to put in the spoiler alert. I’m going to talk about specific things in the movie, so if you want them to be a surprise, stop here.)
The movie itself is full of witty one-liners (mainly courtesy of Wise) and funny moments, such as when the trio breaks into impromptu song in the middle of a bodega. It’s guaranteed to keep you laughing, but the movie is also interlaced with moments of seriousness and true personal hardships. To me, the most powerful moments in Someone Great were when Jenny’s sitting on the train, chasing after Nate, and she has a big epiphany, as well as when she’s sitting at Washington Square Park crying alone and her friends come to find her.
Firstly, the epiphany. The reason I think this is so powerful is that, throughout the entire movie, we witness Jenny running through the day, intermittently drinking and smoking, desperately trying to avoid dealing with the breakup. The storyline itself is lighthearted and sure to keep you laughing at her harmless antics, nevertheless, we realize towards the end of the movie that the point to this running around was so that she could see Nate (the ex) one last time. At the end of her search for Nate, Jenny gets on the train and begins writing. What she writes is later revealed to be her admittance that it isn’t the impending long-distance or past few bad spells that ended the relationship, it was that they grew up, but in growing up, they grew apart. The relationship they had was beautiful, but it was a relationship between two people who didn’t exist anymore and trying to pretend they did would just hurt more. Her realization was one of the saddest and hardest things, but it means you can always hold onto the fact that even if something doesn’t exist anymore, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful while it did.
This is Jenny’s letter to Nate that she writes on the train.
Credit: Blogger Studios
Secondly, the scene at Washington Square Park. This one really hit home for me because it reminded me so much of something my friends have done for me before. In the movie, Jenny is crying alone at the park at the end of the night, everything finally hitting her, when her friends (who have been chasing her for hours) show up and sit with her while she cries. It’s a resonating moment of “Even when the world is falling apart, your friends will always stay there beside you” and speaks to the power of girl friendship. While I have yet to cry alone in a park, I’ve had similar experiences of being in a crisis and knowing that as long as I had my girls by my side, everything was going to be okay.
Jenny’s friends comforting her in the park.
Credit: Vox
All in all, Someone Great does indeed live up to the hype – it’s funny, wacky, and intermittently heartbreaking, but it is 100% one of the best Netflix original movies that have come out in a long time (sorry, Noah Centineo). The messages of the importance of friendship, and of learning to know when to let go, resonate in a subtly powerful way, making this movie well worth the watch.
So, whether you’re experiencing a similar situation, or simply looking for a good movie to watch after a long day of finals studying, put Someone Great on your watchlist, and you can thank me later.
Who knows, maybe you’ll even find yourself inspired to have a Jenny-esque dance party…
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