Directed by Pamela Adlon
Where & When: Los Feliz 3, Los Angeles, CA. June 3, 2024 9:45 PM
In the movies, pregnancy has been typically displayed as women being somewhat uncomfortable, wearing unflattering oversized clothing as their bellies grow while having a strange desire for pickles. Then the baby arrives with the mother, after some pushing and a little sweat, looking refreshed and ready to get back out in the world. But with "Babes", a comedy that marks Pamela Adlon's feature film debut as a director, we are given a more realistic (and humorous) look at the nine months involved (and after) for a woman, revealing many possible complicated mental challenges and extremely, uncomfortable physical situations that she may go through before giving birth.
Ilana Glazer (who co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Rabinowitz) and Michelle Buteau play Eden and Dawn, best friends since middle school, who are out on their annual Thanksgiving tradition of an early movie, followed by a hearty meal. But Dawn is pregnant and goes into labor in the middle of their outing. Eden is with Dawn and her husband, Marty (Hasan Minhaj) as they welcome their first child. Since she's not family, Eden is sent on her way by the nurse despite returning to the hospital with a celebratory sushi dinner for them all.
On the subway ride home, Eden meets a man named Claude (Stephan James). After bonding over sushi, shared life experiences and a quirky sense of humor, they spend the rest of the evening together before ending up in bed together. Eden is surprised that Claude doesn't reply to any of her texts but assumes it was going to be nothing more than a one night stand. With Dawn suffering from postpartum and struggling with breastfeeding, Eden invites her bestie over to cheer her up with a wild night of drinks and drugs. While under a hallucinogenic state, Eden has a sense that she is pregnant and after taking several tests discovers that a baby is actually on the way. An attempt to track down Claude only leads to the sad discovery that he will be unable to help with their child. But Eden decides she wants to keep the baby and raise it as a single mother, especially since she'll have her best friend around to help her out.
With it's rapid fire jokes, broad characterizations and loose structure, "Babes" has far more in common with a television sitcom than a feature film. This isn't all that surprising since Glazer (co-creator/writer of "Broad City") and Adlon (co-creator/writer of "Better Things") have both spent an extensive period of their careers creating and finding great success on television. And there isn't much of a visual style to be found here with the set-ups and the camera work by Jeffrey Kim pretty much ignoring the opportunity for grander cinematic effects, preferring to remain in the narrower visual scope of the small screen.
Yet this can all be overlooked for "Babes" is laugh-out-loud funny, offering hilariously sharp observations (some very TMI) on pregnancy and motherhood that is rarely discussed in entertainment. But at it's core, "Babes" is about female friendship and the struggle to maintain that tight bond while life changes forces the relationship to shift and evolve. This is helped by Glazer and Buteau having a great chemistry that makes you believe that they have been life-long buddies, managing to remain friends even after going through puberty together.
"Babes" is absolutely enjoyable in a breezy, well-written situation comedy, sort-of-way. Yet it doesn't feel special, never rising much above anything you could watch in the comfort of your home, missing a chance to boldly make a much needed and too infrequently made big screen comedy about women for women by women.
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