Babes (now streaming on Hulu) should be a significant blip on the radar for anyone who was wise and/or lucky enough to have watched Better Things, the exemplary FX series created by and starring (and often written and directed by) Pamela Adlon. You know Adlon as the voice of Bobby on King of the Hill and the occasional, now former creative partner of the disgraced Louis CK; Babes is her feature-length directorial debut, working from a screenplay by Broad City collaborators Josh Rabinowitz and Ilana Glazer. The latter also stars in the film, alongside Michelle Buteau, both playing besties navigating the travails of pregnancy and motherhood, sometimes poignantly, but more often with enough verbal raunch to make your boomer mother blanch. Which is to say, itâs a fairly potent comedy concoction.
BABES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: The wikipedia summary describes Eden (Glazer) as âaggressively single,â and if I could say it any better than that, I wouldnât be quoting wikipedia. Sheâs been insanely intimately close with Dawn (Buteau) since they were in training bras, and maybe even before. They were neighbors as kids but now they live several train rides apart, since Dawn moved farther away to raise her family. She has a sweet husband, Marty (Hasan Minhaj), a kid and is massively pregnant with their second â so massively, she and Eden sit down in a movie theater and Dawn canât find a dry seat in the entire place. Guess her water broke, right? But instead of going to the hospital where Dawn will starve for hours or days, they sit down for a massive last lunch.
Not that they put much of a dent in all that food. Labor kicks in and Dawn bends over and Eden confirms that, yes, indeed, sheâs very dilated. (We donât see the Eden POV, so thankfully we just have to take her word for it.) These two friends are rather intimately friends, it seems. Need further proof? Dawn straddles up in the delivery room and Marty and Eden are right up in there with her, allowing Eden to comment rather explicitly on how Dawn defecated during birth and the baby- well, NO SPOILERS. I shanât step on that joke for fear of never getting the residue out of the treads of my Chuck Taylors.
Anyway. What with one thing and another, Eden ends up on a lengthy train ride with $400 worth of sushi (on a yoga instructorâs salary? Sure!), and sharing it with Claude (Stephan James). Heâs funny and sheâs funny and they hit it off and then they go back to her place and hit some other things, like each other! Because they play Street Fighter on Xbox. And then they have sex! And you know what happens when people have sex. Specifically for Eden, she ends up contemplating single motherhood, except sheâd have the undying support of Dawn, which will make it easier, right? Um. Well. Dawn struggles with breastfeeding and has to go back to work and thereâs a plumbing mishap at home (with the actual pipes in the walls, not her human plumbing) and with two kids her cup runneth over with all manner of responsibilities and bodily fluids and there might not be room for Edenâs fluids too. What are 4ever besties to do?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A lot of people like to compare Babes to Bridesmaids or Baby Mama, and thatâs fine, but Iâm going to shove all comparisons aside and implore thee to watch Better Things, because itâs one of the best TV series of this century. Maybe the best.
Performance Worth Watching: Although both leads are funny and excellent, Iâm Team Buteau, because I vibe better with her relatively chill presence, in contrast to Glazerâs uptempo energy.
Memorable Dialogue: Dawn, experiencing massive labor pains, and Eden get up to exit the restaurant. Dawn pauses to lean on a dining coupleâs table:
Dawn: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Eden: Arenât women amazing?
Dawn, through clenched teeth: Enjoy your risotto.
Sex and Skin: Lots of crass, crass (crass!) talk; Glazer in the shower wearing a rather impressive prosthetic baby belly.
Our Take: Babes is a comedy about pregnancy, motherhood, deep lifelong friendship and all the explicitly gross stuff that happens during all of the above. It is remarkably realistic in its portrayal of most of these things. You know how, in so many movies, thereâs a big whoosh when a pregnant womanâs water breaks? Well, in reality itâs far less dramatic, and here, it is simply, in the words of the screenplay, a âlight pussy drizzle.â And instead of a profound and elegiac monologue about the miracle of birth, Glazerâs climactic spiel concludes with a pointed âWhat the fâ!â
A little less crudity mightâve gone harder and farther. At 104 minutes, Babes feels like a tight 92 waiting to happen. Itâs a bit much in moments as Glazer riffs and riffs. It gets a little gross as Glazer works through a scene in which she gulps down her own morning sickness. The drug-trip scene feels a bit cliche. And a sequence in which our principals let out their frustrations by smashing a breast pump machine to the dulcet tones of Shania Twain is too try-hard-y. Adlonâs direction is well-considered and tonally consistent, but I was left with the nagging sense that her vision is greater when she writes her own screenplay, as evident by dozens of episodes of Better Things, which stood out for its defiance of conventional structure and balance of raw, uproarious comedy and gentle profundity.
But weâre assessing Babes on what it is, namely, a consistently funny almost-romp thatâs admirably unfiltered and gentle in its observations of its core bestie-relationship. Buteau and Glazer are a fun, inspired pair with a more offbeat approach to the material than if two big-name stars anchored a mainstream comedy. Theyâre affable and prickly and very much themselves, in both character and persona. They quietly infer insights about friendship â specifically what happens when they focus on what divides them instead of what brings them together â in between some of the most amusingly foul-mouthed lady-raunch ever put to celluloid. And that calculated lack of varnish is a feature, not a defect.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Bottom line, Babes is a rock-solid, consistently funny comedy. Any insight you might glean from it is gravy.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Babes’ on Hulu, Ilana Glazer’s Endearingly Crass Baby-Mama Comedy appeared first on Decider.
