Growing up is inevitable. When we grow older, our tastes change; our habits either change or harden, and things that used to define us become less important. Such maturity or just novelty for new experiences after a while fell even on the fiercely audacious and wildly chaotic Broad City’s twentysomethings, a Comedy Central show that defined the decade co-created by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. The series ended two seasons early in 2019 as the stars wanted to explore other creative ventures with Jacobson going on to create an acclaimed remake of A League of Their Own.
Babes, a pregnancy comedy co-written by Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, who has re-established his authority as a comedian through this film and found himself new and interesting grounds because of it all.is clearly inspired from this background. Pamela Adlon makes her directorial debut in Babes at SXSW festival held over the weekend which shows that maturing is not always presented on screen as it should be because people tend to assume everyone will end up being married with children but growing up can mean different things; partner or not children or not friends can still be life’s compasses like love is: you can still be serious without losing your vulnerable self.
This is such an amazing premise for a film alone, though also well executed by Glazer alongside her fellow actress Michelle Buteau thus I can overlook its weaker points including too much reliance on gross scenes about bodies often seen in Broad City regardless of those ways being awesome unfiltered references about female breasts’ nipple hair, discharges or “just some thin pussy drizzle”. Depending on how one views shit literally – I have very little appetite for that – sometimes these raunchy routines seem more shtick than substance beneath especially when applied into the body horror reality called having kids.
Nonetheless, the easily recognized relationship between Eden (Glazer) and Dawn (Buteau) feels authentic and is acted out well in what is a borderline rom-com, but the real, satisfying love of these two. No better friend exists than the one who Eden says “I can’t take a shit without you.” They are opposites as always-Eden , a bohemian yoga instructor based in Astoria whereas Dawn is an upper east side dentist with her perfect husband Marty (Hasan Minhaj) living in a brownstone and their daughter-although this time each equally brassy and loud. Since having children and moving to another part of town, Dawn has changed, but they are about to go through more changes since she starts off the movie heavily pregnant with her second baby (cue an extremely prolonged public labor scene), while Eden gets knocked up by Claude (Stephan James), a stranger from the subway with whom she had sex for one night only, before he ghosts her.
The ghosting was so strange and jarringly revealed, which is why I genuinely thought it was a joke at first, and even their warm, instinctive, sensuously photographed intimacy between each other that almost ruined the whole show. The movie’s jaunty tone and his death being a joke makes Eden’s relationship to Claude and her decision to have the baby make little sense; if anything, it feels like Dawn devalued their connection when it seems to come out of nowhere from another movie. Same with her dad (Oliver Platt) who played not enough acting by Eden in a scene of their meeting after such long time that looked like parody of apology for “millennials”.
However, as one nears birth – hormones, horniness, scary appointments with a blunt gynecologist played by John Carroll Lynch – and the other grapples with postpartum depression felt lived-in and well-observed even though they were taken up to full tits spurting milk across the room levels. (That scene is among my favorite moments from this film.) The words exchanged between them during what is sure to be an inevitable situation in any movie about diverging futures and compounded slights – on how they should be there for each other now or what best friendship means or what lies ahead in life – are more painful than physical cuts.
I would be happy if everyone could realize this point about friendship being most important. Babes unapologetically reconfigures our romcoms into a story of best friends growing apart but always coming back together sometime later in life while also never treating heterosexual sisterhood during one’s 20’s as just some fleeting phase but an open-ended map worth holding on for dear life where we get two graphically raw births (especially through an impressive performance by Glazer). Like all feel-good movies its resolution is too neat by half but at least Babes is building something new about maturity from that standpoint.
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