For every glowing mother-to-be, there are two or three expectant moms vomiting during their yoga class. That, in a nutshell, is what differentiates “Babes” (opening in theaters today) from most other pregnancy comedies.
The New York women at the heart of Pamela Adlon’s directorial debut have names that are almost sacred toward God and Gaia, but Eden (Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau) are nobody’s emblems of radiance. Glazer, who co-wrote the movie with Josh Rabinowitz, favors a grungier honesty in her assessment of the way carrying, and then tending for, children can alter women’s bodies.
There are references to the pungent smell of childbirth, to hemorrhoids, to vaginal tearing, and to the incessant trickling of breaking one’s water—hardly the instant tsunami as presented in most pregnancy fictions. There is talk of bulky breast pumps and adult diapers. The amniocentesis needle is presented as a potential horror movie weapon, and characters are often throwing up, or on the verge of doing so. This is a film swimming in bodily excretions most of us would prefer stay hidden. And that’s before a century-old septic tank explodes in Dawn’s house, leaving its contents stained on walls and seeping into floors. (That plot point, at least, has nothing to do with pregnancy.)
The movie is also a buddy comedy, and the friendship piece is where the narrative settles into its most familiar beats. Lifelong besties Eden and Dawn have begun to lead separate lives: At the outset of “Babes,” Dawn is in the final stage of pregnancy with her second child with husband Marty (Hasan Minhaj), and has moved to the Upper West Side, which the single Eden never fails to remind her is four trains away from her apartment in Astoria. (Like most movies about hip modern New Yorkers with almost no jobs—Eden holds yoga classes in her fourth-floor walkup—we have no idea how she can afford the place.)
But when Eden engages in a rare one-night stand with a handsome actor she meets on a subway, and winds up pregnant despite all precautions to the contrary, she’s forced to make a decision: abort the pregnancy or become a single mother and join the ranks of her eternally exhausted best friend. This part of “Babes” is mired in deus ex machinas and missed opportunities. The father, in Eden’s case, couldn’t be less of an afterthought, and he’s disposed of in the most crassly flippant way.
As for Eden’s choice, there’s never any doubt the direction she’ll go, but her brief dilemma feels quaintly pre-“Dobbs.” Eden and Dawn may live in a blue-state bubble, but there’s still something a little timid about the way “Babes” doesn’t engage even obliquely with the issue of reproductive autonomy, now that choice itself is a privilege. At any rate, Eden must be pregnant to move her character, and the arc she shares with Dawn, forward.
As a comedy, the hit rate of “Babes” is 50-50. It has a mordant, world-weary wit, and a sequence in which Eden and Dawn trip on mushrooms reveals their fantasies and anxieties with effective sight gags and inspired performances. The misses are mostly when the moments feel too movie-y, too obviously estranged from recognizable human behavior, too silly in a film that otherwise endeavors to strip away the varnish of motherhood.
For all of its adherence to a transparent storytelling formula, there is enough weirdness and wildness around the edges of “Babes” to keep most viewers engaged. In finding reasons to recommend it, I keep returning to its warts-and-all approach, the kind you’ll likely find in the bluntest pregnancy books but never on the Hallmark Channel. If you’re looking for reasons not to have children, “Babes” may be as potent a prophylactic as any.
“Babes” opens today at Cinemark Boca Raton, Movies of Delray, AMC Pompano Beach and other area theaters.
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