*Rocky-related spoilers.*
When the actor playing Frenchie looked familiar to me after season 1 of Our Flag Means Death, I looked him up and realized that I recognized Joel Fry from this movie, where he played the main character’s quirky buddy. Back in 2019, I’d been really excited for Yesterday, but unfortunately, the movie didn’t fully pan out for me. In my review at the time, I praised Himesh Patel’s strong performance but disliked the super clunky romantic storyline and lamented that the cool premise wasn’t executed very well.
Watching it again for Joel Fry-days, my overall impressions of the movie are much the same. Himesh Patel’s acting and singing are both terrific, I like Jack’s imperfect recall of the Beatles’ catalog—a la his ongoing struggle to remember the lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby”—and it cracks me up that Ed Sheeran’s ringtone is “Shape of You.” But the story is still a letdown, and I get aggravated that Richard Curtis’s singular plot device for the film is “character gets repeatedly interrupted by meaningless stuff when they’re trying to share something important.” Seriously, it happens even more often than I’d recalled!
Since I’ve already reviewed Yesterday, I wanted to write something different for today’s post, so it’s time for another Neurodivergent Alley! Before we get into it, here’s my Joel Fry-days addendum to my original review:
Accent Watch
Southern British English, maybe a bit London.
Recommend?
In General – A soft maybe. The parts I like, I like a lot, but there’s a lot of fat surrounding it.
Joel Fry – It’s another yes from me. Look, it’s still relatively early days for Joel Fry-days, so I might just be in the “I love everything!” phase. But I really, really like Fry’s performance as Rocky, which is goofy and fun with moments of unexpected sweetness.
To me, Rocky reads as maybe AuDHD. He’s viewed by others as a terminally unemployable screwup that you can’t depend on. Sadly, even Rocky’s friends see him this way. When Jack runs into him working at a musical festival, Jack remarks, “So everyone who said you were a lazy, useless, drug-taking drunk who’d never get a job were wrong.” Rocky affirms that they were wrong about him, except he’s fired later that day and winds up couch surfing with another friend of theirs. When Jack hears about this, he commiserates with the friend, calling it “a disaster” and warning that it “could last forever.”
To be fair, Rocky struggles with executive function stuff, and he makes easy mistakes when he’s distracted, dropping the ball on important things. He’s also blunt in ways that most people don’t appreciate, and he doesn’t care much about social hierarchies. When Jack gets the chance to open for Ed Sheeran—bringing Rocky as his roadie, as a last resort—Rocky has no problem telling the pop star to his face that it “sounds a bit crap” when he tries to rap. It’s not the only moment where, in Jack’s view, Rocky says something embarrassing or inappropriate in front of someone important.
A key part of Rocky’s bluntness, though, is that he’s not great with social cues. After accompanying Jack on his frantic race to the train station in Liverpool to meet Ellie, Rocky sits down beside them as they prepare to have a serious talk about their relationship. Jack has to tell him, “Rocky, this is completely not a conversation you’re part of.” And later on, when Ellie tells Jack she’s started seeing someone, Rocky can’t figure out why Jack never dated her. Which leads us to this exchange:
ROCKY: “If I had been you, twice a day, I would have loved her up like a lusty lion.”
JACK: “Rocky, if I ask you to just shut up—really, really, really shut up—would that be okay?”
ROCKY: “...Right. Can I just start again and say, isn’t it wonderful news? And I hope they’ll be very happy together and have gorgeous kids! Is that better?”
JACK: “No, it’s worse.”
ROCKY: “I have got a third option, but—”
And that’s the point where Jack cuts him off. Lots of comedies have the inappropriate friend who says horny things or inadvertently makes the hero feel like crap when they’re down. But I don’t often see this dynamic, where it’s clear that the friend realizes they said the wrong thing and tries to course-correct, only they’re not sure how. Rocky asking permission to start again, wondering “is that better?” once he does, and then offering to try a third time? All of that screams, Oh wait, social interaction fumbled—how do I fix this?
Similarly, when the distracted mistakes happen and Rocky screws things up, he’s not just the happy-go-lucky guy who brushes everything off. When he gets fired near the start of the film, he says, “Fair dues,” admitting his fault in it, then sheepishly shakes his head at Jack as he has to admit he’s just lost another job. He does try, and he wants to do well, and it bothers him when he doesn’t. That’s another thing that a lot of movies wouldn’t do with the funny wildcard friend who causes comedic mishaps and makes the hero’s life more difficult. Generally, you’re not “supposed to” empathize with this guy when his own best friend thinks he’s not good for anything, but I do.
For me, a lot of that comes down to how Joel Fry plays Rocky. He brings out the earnestness amid the goofiness and the chaos, making Rocky feel more like a genuine person instead of a caricature. I feel it in those moments where Rocky realizes he’s miscalibrated a social cue, or where he shows that he’s not immune to the perception of him as a hopeless screwup. Best of all, Fry does this while still filling the “goofy chaotic friend” role to a tee—he has some great line deliveries and reaction shots, and I love a moment where it’s revealed that Rocky slept on the couch in his own hotel room, with his jacket, shoes, and sunglasses still on. Hee!
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