Please Note: “I Used To Go Here” was originally scheduled to premiere at the 2020 SXSW Film Festival. With the express consent of the representatives of the filmmakers, we present the review of the film here.
The launch of her first novel was supposed to be a landmark accomplishment for Kate Conklin (Gillian Jacobs). But at 35, her life doesn’t look like she’d imagined it would it would back when she was a college student gluing glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling of her campus housing. With poor sales numbers and her book tour canceled, Kate plasters on a fake smile for friends, who are married, pregnant, and deliriously happy with their life choices. Meanwhile, she can’t even get that lout of an ex to respond to her texts. So when a crush from the past offers a speaking engagement at her alma mater, Kate leaps at the chance to go back to college and play the big shot writer. But “I Used To Go Here’s” heroine soon learns “you can never go home again” is more than a cliché.
Her old stomping grounds initially excite Kate. She relishes being the special guest of the silver fox of an English Comp professor (Jemaine Clement). From the glimmer in her eyes, it’s clear Kate’s hoping something romantic—or at least, hot—can spark here. Then, she meets his wife. Left reeling from one hope crushed too many, Kate wanders to the house she once shared with roommates and finds a friendly batch of college boys who are all too happy to invite her in for brewskies and sympathy. However, there’s an uncomfortable culture clash as Kate and the boys look at each other across this divide of adulthood. All their choices are ahead of them, along with a world of possibilities. Her choices have been made. Hating the results, Kate revolts by diving back into the uni life of drugs, parties, group hangs, and deeply stupid late-night shenanigans.
Written and directed by Kris Rey (formerly Kris Swanberg), “I Used To Go Here” crackles with a determinedly awkward brand of humor. With a tense smile and a plucky attitude, Kate hurls herself into one calamity of interaction after another. She fumbles party talk, bumbles into some three-way PDA, and repeatedly infuriates a brusque bed-and-breakfast proprietor. All the way, we cringe with and laugh with her—not at her. When she reminisces to a college student, “15 years ago, I used to dance here all the time,” and is met with, “15 years ago, I was in kindergarten.” We feel that sting.
How is it all at once our promising youth can feel so close and so far away? No wonder Kate’s tempted to recapture it, even if it makes her a “weird” poser at a college party. The ambition and naiveté of youth are intoxicating. As we grow older, perhaps we grow jaded or scared, and so we’re tempted to play it safe. But what do you do when playing by the rules and making the compromises that once seemed mature doesn’t pay off? “I Used To Go Here” has no answer to that big question. That’s not its point.
What Rey and company offer instead is empathy for the frustration of fearing you’re failing at adulting and desperately wanting a way out. It’s a bit like “Young Adult,” but instead of acid, Rey offers warmth and hope. Rey’s humor is dry and humane, shining a light on the foibles of thirtysomething-hood without scorching those suffering in it. And she’s pulled a terrific cast to pull together Kate’s jaunty misadventure.
With her loose-limbed openness, Jacobs welcomes us in with a crooked grin and a sincere shrug of her shoulders. With a roguish edge, Clement swiftly establishes his hot prof as a temptation. Then, he layers in a dash of smarm and whiff of desperation to complicate the seeming perfection of this soured crush. Comedy nerds will perk up when Jorma Taccone and Kate Micucci pop up for a bad date for the books. With a boyish charm and a steady gaze, Josh Wiggins is a solid lust interest, while his onscreen peers Forrest Goodluck, Khloe Janel, Rammel Chan, and Hannah Marks offer sparks of mischief, humor, and pathos. But the bro’s house has an unexpected scene-stealer in Brandon Daley. Making his feature film debut as the lanky and friendly “Tall Brandon,” Daley delivers a striking star power whether he’s making a soufflé, offering a joint hit, or gently urging a friend toward a better mother-son bond. Honestly, he was intriguing enough in his giddy enthusiasm and eccentricities that I’d be game for a Tall Brandon spinoff.
All in all, “I Used To Go Here” is a charming comedy of low stakes and big heart. Rey prods at the mundane indignities of adulthood with a keen eye and a gentle touch, creating a movie that is daffy but not dumb and a heroine who is complicated but not a lost cause. In the end, both leave us with a smile and a little life lesson. [B+]