Here's Why 'Someone Great (2019)' is Your Next Girls' Night Out Movie

A diminishing long-term relationship, New York City-centric sceneries and college best friends – “Someone Great” is Netflix’s contribution to the next “girls’ night out” list with your friends.

Written and directed by the woman behind the MTV show “Sweet/Vicious”, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s debut feature film taps on the reality of coping with heartbreaks through friends and flights of fancy. Jenny (Gina Rodriguez) thought she had it all planned out when it came to her career and relationship with Nate (Lakeith Stanfield) until an opportunity compromised everything. It’s another movie where our protagonist is being slapped in the face for choosing career ambitions over romance.

Jenny is a music journalist and her new job requires her to move across the country that caused her boyfriend Nate to call it quits after nine years of being together rather than deal with dating long distance. Crushed and devastated, Jenny relies on her friends of almost a decade - Erin (DeWanda Wise) and Blair (Brittany Snow) to get her mind off of the breakup with one last night on the town.

The couple has been together since college and their relationship has evolved from being the passionate head-over-heels type of love to something passive and kind of used to. Jenny and Nate met each other during their early 20s when they are still trying to figure things out for their future and when the time finally came when they needed to decide which path is best to take, that's when their relationship starts to go downhill.

Having a goal that doesn't match up with your partner is probably one of the things that are likely to ruin a relationship - a long-term in particular. The two individuals in a relationship must be heading in the same direction because if those two people have different visions in their lives, it would be difficult to create a middle ground to keep the relationship afloat. As for Jenny and Nate, she finally gets the chance for her dream job and jumps at it, not contemplating the possibility that Nate will not want to make the move from New York City to San Francisco and would rather stay behind being single.

The story not only follows the well-crafted flashbacks of Jenny's relationship with Nate but also highlighted the undeniably remarkable chemistry between the three leads which is safe to say the best part of the movie. The other women are also hampered with struggles of their own: Erin has commitment issues while Blair is in a long-term relationship that has turned sour.

The decision of keeping Nate's present-day picture out of most of the movie is a great choice from Robinson for it paved the way to the trio's very fun and relatable narrative. Indeed, Gina Rodriguez gave a stunning performance in this messy breakup comedy but DeWanda Wise is one for the books. Her character is probably all of us: afraid of commitments, afraid of letting go of the things or routines we normally do, in short, afraid to grow up. Most of us feel that pit in our stomach as we think of our future and the responsibilities alongside it.

Another key factor of the movie is the music. From an opening sequence of text messages and emails between Jenny and Nate with Lorde's 'Supercut' playing in the background to that hilarious and awkward karaoke moment inside a store with Selena's 'Dreaming of You'. The movie's soundtrack succeeds in capturing the way a certain song or even a place can trigger someone's memory of the moments associated with them.

With standout performances from the cast and sleek cinematography, 'Someone Great' is the 2019 hit that you can watch with your friends while staying safe at home amidst this pandemic. It features the ups and downs of a relationship as well as the inevitable quarter-life crisis yet it only shows us that no matter how bad life throws a rock at us, we’ll always have the lasting bonds of friendship and its platonic love to hold onto.