Donna is an aspiring stand-up comedienne in New York
City. Her job at a bookstore is about to
be non-existent as that store closes down, her boyfriend just broke up with
her to go sleep with a friend, and her life is generally a bit of a mess. She hooks up with a guy named Max after a
comedy set goes horribly awry, and she discovers that in their drunken stupor
they had forgotten to use a condom, and now she is pregnant. She decides to get an abortion, but when he
shows up at her work and asks her out again, she realizes that she would like
to try going out with this guy. The only
problem is how to figure out how to tell him about the upcoming procedure.
Let’s go ahead and address the elephant in the room: Yes,
this is a romantic comedy about abortion.
Yes, abortion is a contentious issue that many people think should be
illegal, and even the mention of abortion can bring about hushed silence in
many a social gathering. No, I am not
one of those people who subscribes to that ideology. And no, Obvious
Child is not going to change anyone’s mind about whether abortion is
morally permissible or not. If the
prospect of abortion being normalized offends you, this is not, and never will
be, a film for you.
That said, I think Obvious
Child is a really important film. It
is a comedy, but the topic of abortion is never trivialized for the sake of making jokes or even creating drama. In fact, a major point
of the film is that that sort of drama is largely unnecessary; the film assumes
that it should be a woman’s choice to go through with an abortion, and that’s
never the issue. The abortion is a
foregone conclusion as soon as the pregnancy is confirmed. This is a really refreshing approach to a
sensitive subject that, really, probably shouldn’t be considered so taboo in a
modern, progressive society.
Issue politics aside, what truly carries this film is Jenny Slate’s performance as
Donna. She is instantly likeable and
relatable, treating the character’s life as a punchline for a series of dark
jokes. Slate has talent, and I’d like to
see her career lift off from this film, because without her, a lot of the
film’s charm would have gone to waste.
One of the film’s problems is that, despite the abortion piece, it’s
still a pretty barebones romantic comedy tale, featuring an obligatory gay best
friend, a sister-like roommate, and quirky parents. And yet, Slate makes all these side
characters believable, if by no other virtue than by stealing the spotlight
from them so that we never get to see their lack of dimension. Unfortunately, though, that lack of narrative
meat is a double-edged sword as the film’s final third features some strangely
unfunny filler material wherein Donna is attempted to be seduced by David Cross
(Arrested Development’s Tobias). Considering the film is barely over eighty
minutes long, these scenes were clearly included only to bring the film to
feature length, but they still feel oddly disconnected from the rest of the
narrative and don’t really feature any worthwhile material.
Minor faults aside, Obvious
Child is a really fun movie with some fantastically progressive
attitudes. Jenny Slate is a talented
comedic actress who really knows how to deliver a leading role. This could have been a disaster without
someone charismatic as the face of such a controversial film. And while I don’t think that it’s an
award-worthy piece of cinema, I do think this is an important film by which to
measure our cultural attitudes toward an increasingly more socially accepted
practice.
Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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