BABES
(director: Pamela Adlon; screenwriters: Ilana Glazer, Josh Rabinowitz; cinematographer: Jeffrey Kim; editors: Annie Eifrig, Elizabeth Merrick; music: Jay Lift; cast: Ilana Glazer (Eden), Michelle Buteau (Dawn), John Carroll Lynch (Eden’s Doctor), Hasan Minhaj (Marty, Dawn’s husband), Shola Adewusi (Nanny Dani), Stephen James (actor), Oliver Platt (Eden’s Father); Runtime: 109; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Susie Fox, Ashley Fox, Breean Pojunas, Ilana Glazer, Josh Rabinowitz; Neon; 2024)
“A well-acted and funny film, but not so good as drama.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A messy, gross-out, pregnancy and buddy comedy, that has lots of wise-acre riffs over motherhood. It’s a well-acted and funny film, but not so good as drama. It is co-written by Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, vets of Broad City (part of the Central Comedy television series), and is directed by first-timer Pamela Adlon, a TV actress, director and writer who created Better Things.
Manhattan’s Upper West Side resident Dawn (Michelle Buteau, stand-up comedian) and the yoga teacher, Eden (Ilana Glazer), are best friends since they were 11, growing up in Astoria, Queens. For years they meet every Thanksgiving morning to see a movie together and goof around.
The free-spirit Eden, after one of the Thanksgiving Day meetings, watches Dawn go into labor and takes her to a hospital. On the way home that evening, Eden meets a charming stranger, an actor (Stephan James), on the subway, and after a one-night stand becomes pregnant. Though he vanishes from her life, Eden still decides to have the baby.
Dawn is married to the understanding super nice guy, Marty (Hasan Minhaj), and at the Thanksgiving Day labor scene has a second child to go along with her active 4-year-old.
The immature Eden and the stressed out maturing Dawn grow weary of their friendship and drift apart, but reunite in the end.
John Carroll Lynch’s balding OB-GYN gets ribbed as he plays it straight. Oliver Platt plays Eden’s absentee deadbeat father, in a subplot that goes nowhere.
It plays like an Apatow flick for babes, whose crude comedy and life affirmations are its thing.
It played at the SXSW Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 3/14/2024 GRADE: B-