Babes, 2024.
Directed by Pamela Adlon.
Starring Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau, John Carroll Lynch, Oliver Platt, Sandra Bernhard, Stephan James, Hasan Minhaj, Keith Lucas, Kenneth Lucas, Caleb Mermelstein-Knox, Elena Ouspenskaia, Crystal Finn, and Whoopi Goldberg.
SYNOPSIS:
It tells the story of Eden who becomes pregnant from a one-night-stand and leans on her married best friend and mother of two to guide her.
From director Pamela Adlon and the screenwriting team of star Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, Babes is fittingly gross in its comedic exploration of the messy, torturous process of pregnancy and childbirth. The great trick pulled off here is that the filmmakers accomplish this primarily through side-splitting dialogue and observations about the transformation of a woman’s body rather than taking the cheap route and crossing into something more pointlessly graphic. There is a balancing act to gross-out humor and one that is also easy to appreciate here, as much of this material hasn’t necessarily been mined for laughs yet. And if it has, it probably didn’t have fearless women collaborators steering the ship to find something authentic and moving inside all the jokes.
Eden (Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau) are childhood best friends, now living four subway rides apart, with the former making that trek every Thanksgiving to hang out. Michelle, now married to her supportive husband Marty (Hasan Minhaj), already has one child and is expecting another baby when they reunite. They decide to see a movie, with Michelle moving from seat to seat, exclaiming that they are all wet, amusingly unaware that her water is breaking or on the verge of breaking. Suddenly, Michelle is crawling out of that building in a scene reminiscent of and physically funny in the same manner as Leonardo DiCaprio on Quaaludes trying to reach the front door in The Wolf of Wall Street.
That’s the idea of the comedy here, which leaves no stone unturned, diving into every stage of pregnancy, as Eden finds herself with child after a one-night stand with Claude (Stephan James), making the most of a small role and establishing believable chemistry together. For reasons I won’t reveal, although I will say it’s nothing cruel, Claude is out of the picture, leaving Eden set to be a single mom, looking to the already overstressed and exhausted Michelle (who also has a job and further career ambitions beyond parenting) for guidance and support.
There is a tender, quietly devastating moment when Eden asks Michelle if she really thinks she can do this. Michelle’s facial expressions read no, but she is physically unable to tell her best friend that she doesn’t believe in her or that she has no idea what she is getting into. Part of Michelle’s arc also involves the assumption of being ready to have a second child and the feeling she has had since she got through pregnancy. The early stages of infancy find before everything will be fine and possibly easier next time, when, if anything, it might turn out to be more nightmarish, even if that nightmare does come with a bundle of joy.
Even when Babes is speeding full-throttle through jokes about morning sickness, crazy horniness, amniotic fluids, frighteningly long needles being inserted you know where, or something out-of-left-field silly like Eden wanting a prom-themed childbirth, it’s grounding that comedy into a raw story of a tested best friendship. The situation only becomes more taxing on Michelle, whereas Eden might be planning to lean too much on her for support. The point is that even when the inevitable comedy cliché of fighting best friends arrives, it works here through cutting dialogue and real emotions vented.
Despite maintaining tight control over that characterization, Babes does lose steam as it goes on. This is also not helped by some of the bigger comedic set pieces being dragged out slightly longer than necessary. It’s also almost too convenient for the story that Eden has no one else to turn to for support, although her estranged father does appear for a moving scene. There is also the feeling that, aside from the compelling friendship drama, one has seen everything the jokes have to offer roughly an hour in. Still, when Babes is funny, it is howlingly hilarious and treads new ground, unfiltered and full of infectious, crass energy.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
