I Used To Go Here qualifies for a movie in the same way that my eating nachos at noon 30 qualifies as breakfast because it was the first thing I ate today. It qualifies as a movie in the same way that a batter who takes a hit technically still takes a base. For a start, it’s a bit of a bait and switch when it bills Jemaine Clement alongside Gillian Jacobs. Clement stars in this movie in the same way that M Night Shyamalam stars in The Sixth Sense.
The tone of this movie is meant to be quicky and visually witty, like the second flash of the Polaroid camera, the slow build to my boy Tall Brandon’s arc after he’s abandoned in the yard, or the quick cut from Kate staring in horror a couple about to have sex at a house party while she’s under a desk to plug in her iPhone, but these moments are overwhelmed by a lot of hand-waving about the production of art without any real substance. Kate (Jacobs) chides my new home girl April (Hannah Marks of Banana Split fame–Wife says, “It doesn’t even get its own Wiki page! You know it’s only love, Wife says she only saw the second half but she loved it) for being “naïve” for not wanting to sacrifice her art for commercial success, and then confides in her later about feeling the pressure to produce something–even if it’s bad–in a way that makes you wonder if maybe writer and director Kris Rey was trying to sneak in a few breadcrumbs about the making of this movie.
Some of my favorite gags are obviously meant for poetry-adjacent majors: the way that Kate winsomely laments her lack of qualifications to teach, “I don’t even have an MFA!” or the way David (Clement) casually thanks his student for sharing a piece of crazy-ass DND fan fic and then gently suggests he “lose the first page” as if he’d read more than a page in front of the class. These moments are filled with resentment and ichor for years wasted in some writing program, but they aren’t quite consistent enough to really keep the laughs-per-minute at a steady pace. Some of the most unbelievable moments in this movie are also associated with the portrayal of teaching and the academy: the way Kate can casually turns down a paying job as a teacher on the eve of a terrible review in the Times for her debut novel. I guess she was making rent just fine in her day job 15 years after graduating from writing school? Or the way David matter-of-factly walks away from an unfinished slice of very hard-looking pizza to go to an appointment at half-past too-late-to-be-seeing-a-student–have you ever seen someone not box up pizza? The way no one comments on Bradley Cooper’s name or the fact that greasy ass popcorn is sitting in a plastic fast food container at the bar he and Kate are drinking like that’s an OK thing to see at a bar.
There are few things sadder than seeing my homegirl ride-or-die Gillian Jacobs unapologetically flail through a quarter life crisis as she steadily drifts further and further away from acceptable age to portray someone partying with teenagers in a dorm, which is no knock against Jacobs’s age. Her character on Netflix’s Love, easily in my top five re-watchable rom-coms, is struggling with grown-ass woman problems; even in Community, which Wife has been returning to like a starving sailor returns to a tortoise he has stored in the hull of the ship when all other stores have been depleted, features a Jacobs who is past her university days and a little jaded. This fuck-up story arc just seems to be growing more and more extreme for her as time progresses. Quickly approaching Breathe territory.
I did not used to go here and it’s weird to see a movie so inexcusably uncoupled from reality or a well-defined demographic. I was at multiple moments at pains to identify the target audience of this milquetoast hot-for-teacher-but-not-quite pregnancy-joke slinger of a movie and after having seen the thing in its entirety I’m still not sure what circumstances would have to come from to put this on any list of must-sees. Keep walking away from this trainwreck.
