Review: I Used To Go Here

STUDIO: Gravitas Ventures | DIRECTOR: Kris Rey | CAST: Gillian Jacobs, Jemaine Clement, Hannah Marks, Kate Micucci, Jorma Taccone, Josh Wiggins, Forrest Goodluck
RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 2020
SPECS: NR | 80 min. | Comedy

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie  1/2

Gillian Jacobs and Jermaine Clement are talented actors from two beloved television comedies – Community and Flight of the Conchords, respectively – that hold a dear place in my heart. So I was excited to see them paired up in the new film I Used To Go Here only to be disappointed by the film’s wasted potential.

Jacobs plays author Kate Conklin who should be on top of the world with the debut of her first novel. However, she is despondent over the recent breakup with her fiancé and the cancellation of her book tour due to the lackluster sales. When she receives an invitation from her former professor/mentor/crush (Clement) to do a reading at her alma mater, Kate jumps at the idea, hoping the trip will give her much needed morale boost.

Gillian Jacobs and Jermaine Clement in I Used To Go Here.

Written and directed by Kris Rey (Unexpected), I Used To Go Here has a solid premise ripe for comedic folly and nostalgic yearning but is tame in its approach. As Kate begins to regress back into college life by getting involved in the lives of the twenty-year-olds currently living in her old rental house – attending a kegger, proposing a late night caper with a driver high on Ambien and having a petty jealously of her mentor’s new favorite student – the film fails to mine its set ups to provide any unique perspectives or wry observations. I’m not looking for Animal House, but a trip down university lane should bring more laughs.

Kate spends a good amount of the film wearing a college t-shirt with the motto “Your Future Starts Now” like a billboard to the audience signaling that her character is voyaging through her past in an effort to reshape her future. When she finally learns the lesson that she abandoned her darker, more sophisticated writing style to appeal to a more commercial market, the revelation is treated as an afterthought.

Jacobs and Clement are likeable enough—as are familiar co-stars Kate Micucci (Don’t Think Twice) and Jorma Taccone (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping)—but the film just doesn’t ask enough of their talents and it would have benefited Rey to let her leads go off the syllabus. Lonely failure is the only character trait given to Jacobs, while Clement is stuck playing the charming, rogue professor we’ve seen many times before.

I Used To Go Here isn’t a hard film to sit through it just seems to be stuck in neutral. If you want a unique, comically subversive story of a woman trying to find herself by revisiting her youth, the magnificent film Young Adult with Charlize Theron is a better bet.

I Used to Go Here is now available to view on many streaming platforms.