Someone Great

I remember exactly where I was when I first hit play on Someone Great. I was sitting on my floor, surrounded by half-packed boxes for a move I wasn't sure I wanted to make, and my left foot had completely fallen asleep because I was sitting in a weird, cramped lotus position on a cheap IKEA rug. My circulation was dying, and my life felt like it was in a weird state of transition. Then Gina Rodriguez appeared on screen, sobbing in a neon-lit New York City subway station, and I realized this movie was about to see me in a way I wasn't entirely prepared for.

Released in 2019, Someone Great arrived just as Netflix was shifting from being a library of other people’s content to a factory of its own. It’s a quintessential "streaming era" film—polished, vibrant, and perfectly calibrated for the "watch it in your pajamas with a glass of wine" demographic. But unlike a lot of the algorithm-driven fluff that would follow, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (who’d later give us the sharp Do Revenge) injected this with a jagged, honest edge that most rom-coms are too scared to touch.

A Love Story About Letting Go

The setup is deceptively simple: Jenny (Gina Rodriguez, fresh off the success of Jane the Virgin) lands her dream job at Rolling Stone. The catch? She has to move to San Francisco. Her boyfriend of nine years, Nate (LaKeith Stanfield), can't make the jump with her, so they break up. To survive the immediate, soul-crushing aftermath, Jenny enlists her two best friends, Blair (Brittany Snow) and Erin (DeWanda Wise), for one final, drug-and-alcohol-fueled odyssey through New York City before she leaves.

What makes the film work isn't the quest for concert tickets or the various hijinks involving a drug dealer named Hype (RuPaul); it’s the way Robinson handles the flashbacks. As Jenny wanders through the city, every corner triggers a memory of Nate. These aren't just "greatest hits" moments; they’re the small, quiet, mundane memories that actually make up a nine-year relationship. The film understands that a breakup isn't one big explosion; it’s a thousand tiny paper cuts triggered by a specific song or a bodega sandwich.

LaKeith Stanfield, who was already becoming a king of the indie scene with Sorry to Bother You and Atlanta, is incredible here because he doesn’t play Nate as a villain. He’s just a guy who has reached his limit. It makes the pain sharper because there’s no one to hate—just a life that doesn't fit anymore.

The Power of the Trio

While the marketing sold this as a "breakup movie," it’s actually a loud, messy, tequila-soaked tribute to female friendship. The chemistry between the three leads is the film's engine. DeWanda Wise is an absolute scene-stealer as Erin, the one who uses humor as a shield against her own fear of commitment. Brittany Snow plays against her Pitch Perfect persona as the high-strung Blair, who is realizing her own "perfect" relationship is a boring dead end.

There’s a specific rhythm to how they talk—overlapping, referential, and occasionally mean—that feels authentic to women who have known each other since college. They don't just offer platitudes; they call each other out. Watching this trio navigate a bodega while high on MDMA is more emotionally resonant than any Nicholas Sparks adaptation I’ve ever seen.

It’s also a very "now" movie in how it handles representation. It doesn't pat itself on the back for having a diverse cast or a queer lead; it just presents this world as it is. It feels like the natural evolution of the "city girl" genre, moving past the white-bread exclusivity of Sex and the City into something that looks like the actual 21st-century New York.

The Sound of the Heartbreak

Since the protagonist is a music journalist, the soundtrack had to be a banger, and it absolutely delivers. The use of Lorde’s "Supercut" is legitimately one of the best marriages of sound and image in recent memory. It’s the sonic equivalent of scrolling through your camera roll at 3:00 AM, and it hits like a freight train. Apparently, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson actually wrote the script while listening to Lorde's Melodrama on repeat, and you can feel that specific, crystalline "sad-girl-pop" energy in every frame.

The film does occasionally lean into some streaming-era tropes—the colors are a bit too saturated, the apartments are a bit too spacious for people with those jobs—but it’s grounded by the performances. Gina Rodriguez is a fantastic physical comedian, but it’s her ability to go from a manic laugh to a devastating, snot-dripping cry in three seconds that keeps the movie from becoming too light.

Someone Great is a rare bird: a Netflix Original with a soul. It’s a movie that acknowledges that sometimes "the one" is actually the person you've been sitting on the floor with for a decade, even if they aren't the one you're sleeping with. It’s funny, it’s vibrant, and it’s deeply empathetic toward that terrifying moment in your late 20s when you realize your "real life" is finally starting, and it looks nothing like you planned. If you’ve ever had your heart broken—or if you’ve ever had to say goodbye to a city that held your entire youth—this one is going to leave a mark.