REVIEW: ‘Roommates’ (2026) Goes Along To Get Along

Roommates (2026), directed by Chandler Levack and written by Jimmy Fowlie and Ceara O’Sullivan, is somewhat of a tough hang. It’s the tale of Devon (Sadie Sandler), who, having graduated from high school without a best friend, is on a mission to ensure her forthcoming college experience goes differently. Thankfully, she meets Celeste (Chloe East) at freshman orientation, and everything is perfect from then on. Except not, of course.

Produced for Netflix through Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production company, it quickly becomes clear that something is off about Celeste. She’s always lying about little things, borrowing clothes without asking, and pressuring Devon into situations she’s not comfortable with, using her casual not-like-the-other-girls charm. The audience is clued into Celeste’s off-putting nature far sooner than Devon realizes it, making for a somewhat unpleasant wait until the dam finally breaks.

It’s not very fun waiting around for the main character to realize something that Roommates makes incredibly clear from the start. There is a bit of intrigue about whether Celeste will have an interesting backstory that explains her mischief and misdeeds, but it’s not well teased throughout the movie and is fully fumbled upon reveal. And yet, Celeste isn’t chaotic or evil enough for the antics she causes to feel worth the wait, either.

Waiting for Devon to figure things out about Celeste in Roommates (2026) is a bit of a drag.

It all amounts to a fairly bland plot with reasonably likable characters. Devon is certainly trying her best, and the struggles she endures as a freshman feel real. The crude but never over-the-top language of the movie adds veritas, too. And, as annoying as it is for teenagers to believe there is some kind of social contract barring them from directly confronting their beefs with one another, Roommates at least makes it feel believable that these characters would never have any of the simple conversations that could have solved their tension much sooner.

But again, when the tension finally boils over, there is no catharsis, either. Nobody gets their comeuppance, and the plot barely resolves. It’s by no means the responsibility of a movie to tie up its ending with a bow, or have its characters learn some sort of lesson in the end, but if Roommates is going to commit to a bonkers finale as it does, the ending and postscript deserve to at least be more interesting.

Roommates is stacked with a supporting cast that flavors the movie at least a little. Nick Kroll has good fun as Devon’s slightly cringy father. Natasha Lyonne is totally wasted as her mother, but it’s fun at least to see her mother played by Carol Kane in the best supporting role in the movie. Megan Thee Stallion’s cameo is a bit awkward, but at least she can’t help but charm, much like Steve Buscemi and Janeane Garofalo in theirs.

The characters are likable enough, but not enough to make a bland plot any better.

The one guest role that makes no sense, however, is Sarah Sherman’s. Roommates is actually a frame story told by Sherman’s Dr. Schilling to two newer students who are also going through roommate troubles. While the frame is fine, even occasionally funny, it feels like little more than padding. It adds a smidge of moralizing about how people can resolve their problems if they just communicate, but it mostly serves as opportunities for incredibly ungenerous jokes fetishizing gay characters and relationships.

This comes up regularly throughout the movie, but especially during the frame segments. Roommates is constantly making jokes about how much more fun gay men are than anybody else, or how the story would have been better if Devon and Celeste were lesbians. One joke would have been odd on its own, but repeatedly making these jokes in a movie that already shoehorns in a coming-out plot and is otherwise quite heteronormative is just unpleasant to hear over and over again.

Roommates is a decent attempt at teen comedy, but it too often comes across as adults trying to sound hip to young people. The hat is tipped too hard, too early, as to where the movie is going, and none of the resolutions, creative as they are, feel satisfying enough to warrant the anodyne wait to arrive there

Roommates (2026) is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.