Directed By Ally Pankiw

Starring – Rachel Sennott, Olga Petsa, Jason Jones

The Plot – Follows Sam Cowell (Sennott), an aspiring stand-up comedian and au pair struggling with PTSD, as she decides whether or not to join the search for Brooke (Petsa), a missing teenage girl she used to nanny. The story exists between the present, where Sam tries to recover from her trauma and get back on stage, and the past, where memories of Brooke make it harder and harder to ignore the petulant teen’s sudden disappearance.

This film is currently not rated

I Used to be Funny | Official Trailer | Utopia (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

In her feature length debut as a director, Pankiw cements herself as a daring risktaker, and one who prescribes such a unique vision to the film that I truly wasn’t expecting. For starters, the trailer didn’t give a thing away about the realities of this film, advertising it as a comedy, but in reality an emotional drama on the perils of PTSD that opens this film up to tonal and creative freedoms that it otherwise wouldn’t have as a comedy. To be fair, there are definitely comedic moments in the film that brandish the silly and occasionally demented personalities of its characters, but it’s used sparingly enough as a tool for much-needed levity following scenes that are gripping and traumatic, all with magnificent control from Pankiw that keeps either side of the tonal shift from weakening the impacts of the other. Because of executing this female-led traumatic event, the film also opportunistically and cleverly taps into many elements of toxic masculinity, social media harassment, and grief that Pankiw genuinely depicts, with occasional glances into Sam’s aftershock that unfortunately many female moviegoers will taste familiarity in. In fact, Pankiw herself accurately utilizes these elements so authentically that it feels deeply personal to her, and while my studying on her backstory is slightly lacking, I wouldn’t be surprised if the film had autobiographical inserts of her own experiences, based purely on how real the psychologies of these scenes accurately play out. On top of this, the structure of the script is quite unconventional, with two distinctly differing timelines, pre and post traumatic event, conveying the extensive magnitude of Sam’s regressing transformation. While this framing device is certainly nothing new to cinema, it does feel refreshingly unique in the depths of a traumatic event to which the entirety of the film centers around, casually hinting at the darker days ahead, but never quite with the transparency needed to halt speculation. This aspect alone kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the entirety of the film, and while one could easily interpret just what exactly Sam experienced during one fateful night, the degrading and abusive extension of such serves as the mental manifestation for the person we see during the secondary timeline of this storytelling, clashing the two areas of the film so impactfully that the film and our expectations are never the same once we know the details of the burden that she carries in her head, day after humiliating day. The exposition in information is conveyed earnestly in ways that can be articulated in a single glance or responsive expression, and when combined with conversations between characters expressing naturalistic dialogue that feels every bit lived-in with experience and chemistry as it does subtle with its spontaneous quips, results in a meaningful method of storytelling that makes the most of every scene or sequence. However, Pankiw’s merits don’t just lend themselves to creative storytelling, but also technical enhancements, like the film’s many editing schemes, that play subconsciously into the memories that Sam can’t escape. Similar to how Jean-Marc Vallee used to interject scenes in real time with sequences involving cryptic imagery or meaningful music cues, so too does Pankiw, only while spreading the many pieces of this mystery in past-tense, conveying that there’s meaning in every image that she’s constantly constructing, but one that comes together wonderfully when eventually pieced together, which could help supplant strong replay value to a film that would be tough to experience multiple times for a majority of the audience. Lastly, Rachel Sennott gives the defining performance of her career thus far, as Sam, with two distinctly different performances for the price of one that helps cement her undeniable range as a performer. As to where the entirety of Sennott’s career thus far has been utilized in the depths of raunchy comedies, her turn here is defined by dramatic frailty and tenderness, in what essentially feels like two distinctly different characters. For the first half, she’s every bit the sardonic standard we’ve come to expect from her, with impeccable comedic timing and radiant charisma that makes it effortless to indulge in her, and for the second and more impactful half, the aforementioned elements of frailty and vulnerability make up a woman who mentally and physically lives in the past of one torturous night, with a disconnected consistency to reality that ostracizes her from those she’s closest to. It offers Sennott the deepest and darkest material that she’s ever been forced to act off of, and predictably she rises to the occasion with a psychologically complex and grueling portrayal that alone is worth the price of admission, and when combined with the ever-changing dynamic that she shares with Olga Petsa, appraises a value to the film that drives much of Sam’s dilemma with holding on to the people and places she once fell back on.

NEGATIVES

While ‘I Used to Be Funny’ is an overwhelming triumph for Ally Pankiw, it doesn’t come without momentary hinderances, even in the depths of the aforementioned multiple timelines framing device that is made unnecessarily complicated with sloppy sequencing. This is mostly due to the sporadically abrupt time jumps not only between timelines, but also with the storytelling itself within each half that is not always being told in naturally linear order, making it difficult to remain invested or even focused on where we are at in the story, at any given moment. I do appreciate that this director has total confidence in her audience to piece together certain visual cues that elaborate just which timeline we’re at, but it isn’t always as seamlessly effortless as an ambitious execution like this requires, resulting in periodic confusion for someone like me who was firmly invested to the proceedings, which will be even worse for someone who isn’t. In addition to this, it took a little longer than expected to become invested in the narrative, as it takes a little longer than expected to live and grow with these characters, especially with an opening act that is just used to build the foundation of Sam and this family that she’s applying to work for. Because the in-depth characterization really doesn’t take flight until the second act of the movie, when some key relationship dynamics are fleshed out, it feels like the first act is stalled by introductory notes that casually feel like a film that is already in progress, leaving it until the film’s halfway point where elements of urgency and uncertainty help to spike its appeal to just where the story is headed. Finally, while something that won’t be a problem for anyone reading this, ‘I Used To Be Funny’ is another example of a film depicting stand-up comedy, with material that isn’t even remotely funny. This wouldn’t be a problem if the film outside of the stage wasn’t effectively humorous, but I found the dynamic between Sam and her two roommates to be one that was full of intoxicating banter, so ultimately it leaves Sam’s material coming across as forced and ineffective, especially when a secondary character is praising her talents. It’s not something that is deserving of the movie losing an entire point in grading scale, but it does further continue this cliche within cinema that should be simple to resolve, but isn’t, with Sam’s primary building blocks failing her almost immediately in the film.

OVERALL
‘I Used to Be Funny’ is a simultaneously humorous and heartbreaking engagement that confronts PTSD and depression with the kind of lived-in subtlety that is rich with humanity. As a rousing triumphant feature length debut for Ally Pankiw, her biggest achievement rests in the casting of Sennott as her primary protagonist, who combines raw and unrelenting remorse after a night that changed everything, all in cementing Sennott’s most meaningfully vulnerable portrayal to date.

My Grade: 8/10 or B