[ESP-ENG] Film Review: I Used to Be Funny (2023)

Hello friends of the Movies & Tv community, I hope you are doing well today. I was reviewing my watchlist and I saw a few movies that were not so famous but for some reason I saved and I chose a Canadian movie called I Used to be Funny of comedy and drama genre written and directed by Ally Pankiw from the year 2023. I don't usually call my attention movies of comedy genre except for some that are really good in terms of their genre but I kept this one because I found the story interesting and with a background where the protagonist lives a situation that leaves her with PTSD, psychology has always seemed interesting to me and seeing this kind of situations in movies I usually like because I learn from the perspective of the protagonist what she feels and how she lives with this situation. So I invite you to read my review of I Used to be Funny.

The plot revolves around a woman named Sam who is dedicated to the world of stan up as a comedian and at the same time also works as a nanny in the city of Toronto, although not doing badly as a comedian manages to get a job offer as a nanny who decides to accept even though the situation in the home where she arrives is somewhat complex because she has to take care of a teenager named Brooke who is going through many changes in her life both personal and family especially has a lot of stress because her mother is in the hospital and is afraid of losing her. Obviously Brooke does not want a nanny who is all the time on her and also tells everything she does to her father, but Sam gradually earns Brooke's trust and they create a friendly bond where Brooke finds in Sam a person who understands her and who is also very funny and always has a funny way of seeing life.

As Brooke's mother struggles between life and death, Sam gets to know Brooke's father, Cameron, who is interested in her work as a comedian and tells her that Brooke is feeling better since she has come into their lives. Unfortunately Brooke's mother does not make it out of the hospital alive and this makes the bond between Brooke and Sam very difficult to bear as Brooke feels totally depressed and feels that without her mother her life will never be the same. Now Sam is increasingly committed to caring for Brooke in a more sisterly way and to making her life meaningful again despite the pain she feels from the loss of her mother. But things get complicated when one night Cameron arrives and an irregular situation occurs in the house, that's when Sam decides to get Brooke out of her house and away from that place that now seems more dangerous and not a safe place for Brooke and especially for Sam.

During the next few minutes Sam begins to have flashbacks of a traumatic situation she lived in Sam and Cameron's house that torments her constantly and that to this day keeps her in a state of depression and alertness, then we learn that Sam was a victim of sexual abuse by Brooke's father, Cameron. When Sam decides to file the complaint the same night she escapes from the house with Brooke and after Cameron is arrested alleging that he was the one who sexually abused Sam, this news is very bad for Brooke who gets upset with Sam and tells her that she is to blame for her life to be ruined, that her mother died and that now her father is in prison leaving her all alone alleging that she is lying about the sexual abuse.

Sam totally withdraws from Brooke's life although she always remembers her and keeps thinking about what she could be doing being so young and the dangers in the world especially for a twelve year old girl like her. In the meantime she spends her days with her two best friends who lent her their home so she could recover from being abused and encourage her to go back to doing comedy with them who are also in the business. We can see that for a person who was a victim of sexual abuse it is very difficult to accept that it was not her fault that she had to go through that, that she did not do something "wrong" to be in that situation and that fear is something constant in her life even though the person who did this to her is in jail, I can't talk about something I haven't lived through but it must be extremely difficult to go through this and to have to process it and try to restart your life in a normal way without it continuing to affect you in every aspect of your life, that's how post-traumatic stress feels, you are always thinking that at any moment it could happen and that it will be your fault for not knowing how to deal with such a horrible situation.

For me, this film shows in a subtle way what it is like to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and how, despite living through an event that marks you forever, the protagonist was able to overcome it and return to what she is most passionate about, which is being a comedian, sometimes you have to look at the situations we live through with humor because there are things that human beings go through that are so difficult to understand that they overwhelm us and humor is a way to try to regain the confidence to continue with your life as long as humor is not used to diminish the fact that you lived through something that really affected you. It is a film that seeks to entertain but also to see that side of the human being that can be so fragile and that can live any person regardless of age, sex, race or social class. So if you like this kind of movies with a humorous story but with some realism and psychology inside it, this is a good option, there are no explicit scenes of what happened so you can watch it without problems.