I Used to be Funny is one of those strange movies that manages to be both hilarious and incredibly heartbreaking, and yet there’s truth somewhere in the middle of both those things. Healing doesn’t happen the way we want it to happen, and it rarely follows any rules. Instead, healing happens the way it has to happen for everyone, and that is hard to predict. For Sam, healing might look a different way than it might look for some of us, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some power in seeing what her journey is.
The magic of entertainment is, sometimes, being able to find truth in experiences that don’t really feel familiar. There is, of course, a certain inescapable sense of belonging when you see something you relate to, but there’s also a certain magic to understanding someone who is going through something you will never go through, just because you can relate to the emotion. That’s on the writing and, in many cases on the acting and the setup of a movie. I Used to Be Funny is a deeply relatable movie, even if you aren’t Sam, you might never be Sam.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Rachel Sennott carries this movie as if she was made to star in it because anyone familiar with Sennott’s work already knows she is capable of it. But it’s still such a hard job to carry Sam in the way she does because Sam herself doesn’t seem to know what she’ll be feeling from one moment to the next, and if that’s hard enough when you’re living it in real life when there’s conscious thought behind portraying it, then the job gets even harder. Sennott, however, doesn’t just excel at it, she seems to carry Sam as if doing so isn’t a burden.
As if grief isn’t a burden.
But as someone who has felt it, who has tried to shed it, the truth it is inescapable. Grief is a burden, and a hefty one to carry. One that, at times, makes you feel like you’re going to choke. I Used to be Funny lets you set in the feeling, in the PTSD, in the misery. And then it’ll lift you up for a bit. You lift your eyes up and remember it’s a movie you’re watching. It’s not reality. Not really.
Writer/Director Ally Pankiw deserves as much praise as Sennott for a filmmaking debut that is less than perfect, but that even when it falters, when it hits too hard, when it doesn’t know how to let you breathe, still manages to make you feel in a way that is, more often than not, better than nothing.
I Used to Be Funny isn’t really funny, though there’s humor in it. Instead, it’s heartbreaking, raw, and it’s very, very real. That is, sometimes, more important than anything else.
I Used to Be Funny will be in theaters in New York on June 7, 2024, and in Los Angeles on June 14. It will be available on Digital on June 18th.
