Quick Synopsis: Pregnant after a one-night stand, Eden (Ilana Glazer) leans on her best friend Michelle (Michelle Buteau) for guidance in this millennial hot mess from-com (friendship rom-com).

I was a bit wary of watching this, primarily because of how terrible the poster is. Not the one with the pink background, the one with the yellow background. The faces don’t look real, so your first opinion of the film is “cheap”. Thankfully, the film itself doesn’t suffer the same problems.

I feel weird reviewing this. I want to say “This is an open and honest depiction of pregnancy, with none of the Hollywoodness which usually happens when the subject is displayed on film”. But let’s face it. I don’t know. I have no idea if this is an honest depiction or whether this is just a different kind of lying. This FEELS more honest though. There’s no attempt to beautify pregnancy or downplay the pressures it causes on the female body, or how stressful parenthood can be. It’s not just honest, it’s also VERY good.

Babes is Pamela Adlon’s feature directorial debut. I have no reason to mention that. Adlon did a good job of directing it but nothing really stood out as superb in terms of directing, I don’t mean that in a bad way, Kevin Smith made a career out of that. I only mention it because she voiced Bobby in King Of The Hill, and I just find that weird.

Really, Babes belongs to Glazer (as in, the film called Babes belongs to her, she doesn’t own all women who adhere to superficial beauty standards, nor would I think she would want to). She co-wrote it with Josh Rabonitz, and the dialogue really has her voice running throughout it, she is completely friend goals, I’m not just talking about her character in this, I mean just in general. I have no issues with her performance. I’m not like “Give her ALL the awards” but there were zero points where I thought “She’s only here because she wrote it”. She is the best possible casting choice for the character of Eden. She plays well off Michelle Buteau, who I must admit I’m not that familiar with but has the air of somebody who would be GREAT at Taskmaster.

Babes does set itself a difficult task, Eden gets pregnant from a one-night stand with a man who passes away the day after from nut-related choking. For Babes to have any emotional core you need to buy that the relationship between the two is genuine. That’s difficult to do when the characters only meet once. This manages it though. The connection the two characters have is electric. The interplay between the two on the train is some of the best “getting to know you” dialogue I have ever seen, and it instantly made me slightly sad that I would never have that anybody because of my general repulsive personality and/or face.

It’s helped that the guy is played by Stephan James, best known for If Beale Street Could Talk, Selma (where he played John Lewis, not the shop), and Race where he played Jesse Owens. So he’s used to carrying a lot on his shoulders in his performance. He’s pretty damn great in this. I feel he could replace James Earl Jones as THE VOICE for stuff now.

In summary; this is a lot of fun. It’s the closest a film this year has got to matching the brilliance of Bottoms. I love the film, I love the soundtrack, I love the characters. And I love how it suggests abortion but doesn’t moralise about it, just presents it as an option. It’s proudly pro-choice, and I can’t help but love a film like that. It’s such a fun watch. It’s nice to have something so warm and funny, like a clown on fire, but funny. The downside is that it’s a difficult film to Google. Turns out if you google “babes”, you do not get this movie. Maybe because I’m not focusing on how emotionally naked the characters in this film are, truly displaying their soul to everybody. I’ll try “Naked Babes” and see if that brings up this movie.