45 Thoughts I Had Watching Dakota Johnson in ‘Am I OK?’

My personal favorite celebrity nepo baby, Dakota Johnson, starring in a queer rom-com? Happy Pride to me! The film in question, Am I OK?, was directed by Tig Notaro and her wife, Stephanie Allynne (whom the real ones among us might remember from that epic The L Word: Gen Q threesome scene), so it’s fair to say that my hopes were high for a movie that actually vaguely resembled what it’s like to be young-ish and queer in a major city. So, let’s dive in, shall we?

1. Opening with a Sleater-Kinney song? Okay, this seems authentically lesbian.
2. OMG, Kiersey Clemons!
3. Are they at Clark Street Diner? (Sorry, I’m insufferable when I think I recognize a Los Angeles shooting location.)
4. Dakota is wearing a little watch cap, so you know she’s going to have a gay arc.
5. Dakota’s forgettable-looking guy friend doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo about the gay arc, because he tries to kiss her and is vaguely pissy when she’s not into it? Women don’t owe you shit!
6. Gideon Adlon’s Lil Yachty-themed yoga class is giving me hives.
7. Sorry to be a cop, but if I were in this yoga class, I would be beaming mental death rays at the two women talking loudly throughout.
8. Kiersey as a touchy-feely massage therapist? I sense gay intrigue.
9. Jack from Will and Grace offers Dakota’s bestie (who shall henceforth be referred to as Bestie) a job in London.
10. What is this cocktail they’re drinking that seems to involve half of an orange?
11. Oh nooo, Bestie is moving to London and Dakota is upset.
12. God, I really hate the trope of women desperately waiting for their boyfriends to propose. Propose to him yourself if you’re that pressed!
13. Oop, Bestie kissed a girl in high school and Dakota is jealous.
14. Aw, weeping and coming out to your best friend theoretically (as opposed to after an actual queer experience) is so real.
15. I also relate to Dakota not wanting to come out at 32 because “people figure it out when they’re, like, nine”; I was 24 and I still felt like that!
16. “All lesbians know each other” is a boring and outdated stereotype. That said, I did run into pretty much everyone I’ve ever met at a Pride party this week.
17. Omg, Kiersey and Dakota are going to hang out! Wink-wink!
18. MOLLY GORDON? Well, yes!
19. I’m trying not to be upset about how low these girls’ body counts are in comparison to those of everyone I know. Maybe they’re all serial monogamists or something?
20. “I don’t want to be this thing that’s different. I don’t want to have to tell everybody this big thing.” Sob! Girl, read my coming-out-later-in-life story!
21. Sorry, what is Dakota’s job? Is it just sitting in a chair and flirting with Kiersey? And are they hiring?
22. There are definitely vibes between Dakota and Kiersey, but Dakota fumbles it. They do have a mini-smooch at the door, though.
23. I’m sorry, is this lesbian bar called…The Womb?
24. I am the most committed lesbian bar stan in the world, possibly (I’ve gone to the few remaining ones everywhere from Houston to Nashville to Portland and beyond), and I still would not go to a bar called the Womb, even if someone really hot was supposed to be there.
25. Ugh, gay dancing is so fun.
26. I see Dakota is wearing her little gay hat.
27. Ayyy, it’s E.R. Fightmaster!
28. Sobbing in bed after an unsuccessful night out at the lesbian bar because your friend got it in and you didn’t…also real as hell.
29. Lesbianism really is 80% fighting with your platonic female friends (or maybe that’s just the human condition?).
30. Oh, shit, Bestie is being borderline homophobic.
31. Obsessed with Dakota and Kiersey’s “try-on party” turning sapphic, as things tend to do when you’re smoking weed and getting naked with someone who’s supposedly just a friend.
32. Okay, these girlies do have chemistry.
33. Sex time!
34. Ugh, not the next-morning sneak-out. Go get awkward hungover post-hookup breakfast at Millie’s like all the other Silver Lake lesbians!
35. Oop, Bestie and Molly Gordon are going to something called a “hammock retreat” in the woods.
36. Aw, Bestie’s cute boyfriend no longer wants to follow her to London.
37. I mean, no offense to our colleagues in Vogue’s London office, but I don’t want to live there either! Isn’t it somehow even more expensive than New York?
38. Dakota comes out to the boring guy who was trying to make out with her earlier, and I just want to say: If your friend comes out to you, you probably shouldn’t look vaguely disappointed, even if you were still holding onto a dream of hitting that.
39. Lesbian app-date sequence time, a.k.a. cinema-verité footage of me from roughly 2018 to 2021.
40. God, dating is exhausting. But necessary!
41. Aw, Dakota’s painting.
42. This hammock retreat looks kind of awesome, but then again, I did make my college friends camp in a converted school bus in Maine one summer, so I’m sort of the target audience for a woo-woo vacation.
43. Hey, it’s Tig!
44. Dakota and Bestie reconcile (once again at Clark Street Diner), and Bestie is still moving to London, but Dakota is a gay painter now, so she seems okay with it.
45. Final verdict: the script was sadly somewhat mid, but Dakota Johnson, you ate that.