Patron Pick – Babes

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

Babes (2024)
Written by Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz
Directed by Pamela Adlon

I went into this film with not the highest of expectations. I wanted to enjoy it, though. Ilana Glazer was hilarious on Comedy Central’s Broad City, though I haven’t been incredibly impressed with her work outside of that series. Pamela Adlon is an actress I’ve enjoyed the performances of, from voicing Bobby Hill to her more recent live-action turns. Better Things, her now-concluded FX show, is on my TV list to watch from beginning to end. All this to say, I wanted to give Babes a fair show, but my god, this is one of the worst films I have seen in a very long time. It has me reeling about how infantile media made for adults is becoming in the States, but maybe it’s always been like this, and I’m just perceiving it now.

Eden (Glazer) helps her best friend, Dawn (Michelle Buteau), when they are on a girls’ day and Dawn goes into labor. After rushing to get sushi for the new mother and her husband, Marty (Hasan Minhaj), Eve is denied entry; she’s not family. This leads to her sharing the sushi in a meet-cute with Claude (Stephan James). They feel a powerful connection and end up having unprotected sex, something they agreed upon beforehand. Eventually, the signs are there, and after taking several pregnancy tests, Eden sets out to break the news to Claude. Eventually, she finds out why he can’t be involved and decides to raise the baby herself. This leads to conflicts with Dawn, who is already the mother of two children and getting busier, while her mother-to-be friend needs help navigating these waters.

On paper, this could work. The final product is one of the worst things I’ve seen in a long time. The most glaring problem with the film is how inhuman everyone is acting. Maybe this is a product of living in the Netherlands for three years, but human beings don’t spout Millennial slang this often, do they? If this was a movie you related to, I genuinely feel sorry for you because I would suspect you doing extreme social masking if you behave similarly. None of the characters in this movie feels authentic; they are cartoons, grotesque exaggerations of people.

I may not be the target audience, but I’m also not some dudebro chud opposed to films about women. The problem here is the American-ess of the script & performances. Every plot development is easily predictable, every performance feels like a person spouting random noises at a certain point (there’s a scene where it looked like improv actors playing wild animals for no coherent reason), and weird asides that feel lifted from a PSA about reproductive health. That latter element made me realize what I was looking at here, which made my heart sink. I think this film was intended to communicate information about reproductive health to a population not given adequate instruction in schools. That we have to make low-quality comedies intended for streaming to do this speaks volumes about how much American society has failed.

When the characters aren’t shouting “bitch” at each other back and forth for five minutes (I’m not exaggerating), they are having very wooden chats that seem cut & pasted out of the pamphlets you’d find in an obgyn’s waiting room. The information is regarding things people should know like you can still get pregnant during your period. Again, the content is not my problem, it’s the choice of presentation where Babes totally falls apart. The picture feels far more focused on its desperate attempts at “comedy,” making the info-bits feel hammered into the story. This tonal unevenness makes watching Babes an excruciating chore.

I won’t blame the performers for this, as I’ve seen so many of these people in much better productions. This is a movie with John Caroll Lynch and Oliver Platt, and it manages to make them look bad. I didn’t think such a thing was possible. That means it’s the fault of the screenwriters and the director, which hurts to say. I appreciate Glazer, especially their stance on Palestine. They’ve openly stated that their Judaism is not tied to the existence of Israel and that apartheid in Israel cannot be allowed to continue. As they work in the industry, they take many chances to stand up for what is right, and I applaud them for that. However, this piece of writing is absolutely dreadfully done.

I get what the script was going for. It wanted to touch on the same territory as Obvious Child or Knocked Up. The Apatow films strongly influenced American cinematic comedy’s direction since they were massive box office hits. The poster for Babes includes a quote that tries to say it’s on the same level as the Apatow-produced Bridesmaids. I couldn’t agree less. I loved Bridesmaids and saw it twice in the theater, which is not something I do often, especially with comedies. Bridesmaids worked not because of its realism; rather, it understood the tone it was going for and was consistent. It was even written by the star of the movie, too. I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t the Millennial sensibilities that I just can’t gel with. Apart from comedians like John Early & Kate Berlant, I don’t find the comedy of my own generation all that funny.

I’ve also found that as I’ve gotten older, most of those Apatow comedies aren’t funny to me anymore. Their point of view often comes from a very unenlightened place, so their observations are shallow. I’m not really interested in that perspective any longer. This is Glazer’s second pregnancy-focused film, the first being False Positive, a horror (comedy?) where they once again star in the lead role and, this time, are worried about the body horror aspects of the process. I didn’t find that film nearly as obnoxious as this one, but it wasn’t good either. Another problem with this movie is that the focus is so tightly on Eden as the new mother that we don’t get nearly enough about Dawn balancing two children now. I would have liked to have seen more from her. 

I don’t deny that Babes had its heart in the right place, but it is a disaster, in my opinion. From the opening moments to the ending, I could feel the slog of making it through this relatively short run time. It does not feel short, though, with so much filler and PSA moments, I felt exhausted. If they were going to emulate the structure of another film, I think I would have gone with something like The Big Short, which managed to blend narrative and informational cinema together quite successfully. Having that more explicit division on screen would have made for a better flow and, hopefully, a better viewing experience.