A funny movie, unfunny issues
If you don't like raunchy humor about girls who pass gas while wearing days-old underwear or life-affirming jokes about having one's first abortion, then stop here.
If you don't like raunchy humor about girls who pass gas while wearing days-old underwear or life-affirming jokes about having one's first abortion, then stop here.
If you love it (Whoa! Woe unto you!), then the hilarious, thoughtful, painfully sentient indie comedy Obvious Child will touch you like no other sexual or transcendent experience possibly could.
Adapted by writer-director Gillian Robespierre from her 2009 short, Obvious Child is a cross between a Woody Allen farce and a one-woman show by Sarah Silverman.
Saturday Night Live alumnus Jenny Slate kills as the film's heroine, Donna Stern, a slightly directionless stand-up comic nearing 30 who learns early in the story that her boyfriend has been having a long-term affair with her best friend.
Retreating to her tiny bedroom in Brooklyn, Donna downs a few bottles of booze and jumps onto an emotional roller coaster bordering on the psychotic. She drunk-dials the cad a few dozen times; she weeps; she hides under the covers like a little girl; she dances with maniacal energy.
For the most part, she feels ugly and unlovable, inciting her friend, Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann), into delightfully strident declamations against the phallocentric hegemony that keeps women enslaved.
Fellow comic Joey (Gabe Liedman, one half of Slate's Gabe & Jenny comedy duo) helps her build up her confidence, while lecherous stand-up horndog Sam (David Cross) tries to bed her.
Donna's life changes forever when she meets Max (The Office's Jake Lacy), a straight-laced grad student who is obliging and giving in a drunken one-night stand.
By now, you've heard about the film's much ballyhooed twist: Donna becomes pregnant and decides to have an abortion. (If you haven't, then stop reading. Spoilers below.)
Obvious Child is hardly on a par with Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch, but it makes a radical move - a move so foreign to Hollywood, it's shocking - by presenting abortion as an option that a reasonable, responsible woman might take.
The film occasions a serious reassessment of the hundreds of movies and TV shows that have previously tackled the topic. Even the most liberal will float abortion as an option only to have the heroine decide to keep the baby.
Donna's life takes yet another turn when she keeps running into Max.
An earnest fellow who has fallen hard for the comic, he persists and eventually wins her hand in girlfriendhood. Their first significant date: a trip to the clinic.
Obvious Child ***1/2 (out of four stars)
Directed by Gillian Robespierre. With Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann, David Cross, Polly Draper. Distributed by A24.
Running time: 1 hour, 29 mins.
Parent's guide: R (language, sexual content, adult themes).
Playing at: Ritz Five.
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