Review of Babes, directed by Pamela Adlon

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

Because my budget has been a lot more limited, that means I’m getting more crafty with what subscriptions I have at any time. Subscriptions can seriously add up, and because I want to be realistic about my finances and the current economic situation of the world, I can’t be getting whatever I want when I want. Even though they face the threat of getting defunded, I’ve really been relying on my local library.

They offer not only books, but DVDs, telescopes, video games, CDs, and so much more for its patrons to check out. They offer even digital subscriptions to all the online publications I would want to read, as well as access to Kanopy. I used to use Kanopy a lot, but fell off when our old television stopped supporting it.

But when we got a new television, I was able to finally watch Kanopy again on it and I decided to take that opportunity and run with it. So while I was chipping away at the job applications and working on my freelance gigs and the blog, I decided to put a movie on here and there. And yes, it made me a little less productive sometimes, but it also kept me sane.

I watched Babes on Kanopy largely because it was glitching my watchlist and showing up five times, so I wanted to watch it just so I could remove it. My watchlist has over five hundred movies on it as of right now. I do need to clean it up a lot and get through this incredibly amount of backlog—if I ever do get through it.

Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much!

After her best friend has a baby, a woman finds herself pregnant, too, and has shifting priorities.

Our main character in this movie is Eden, although we get a healthy dose of her best friend Dawn throughout as well. She’s single, and every year these two go out for Thanksgiving to the movies and then a meal, but this year is different. When they’re in the movie theater, Dawn, who is very pregnant, finds liquid dripping down her legs. Turns out her water broke, but instead of going to the hospital immediately, our dynamic duo heads to a restaurant to eat.

Eden follows Dawn to the hospital after that, and Dawn gives birth to a healthy baby. She’s desperately craving sushi though, so her husband (Marty) and she send Eden out to get them some. But when Eden comes back, the hospital staff refuses to let her in with the sushi. Eden decides to head home with it, eats the sushi in the middle of the subway car, but then befriends a guy named Claude.

They end up hitting it off and heading home together. After some passionate sex, he leaves, but Eden never hears back from him again after getting his phone number. She somewhat moves on and a month passes. Eden asks Dawn to come over for New Year’s Eve, and we learn Dawn has been struggling with depression after having her child.

After getting drunk and high, Eden decides to take a pregnancy test after having a vision of her pregnant. Multiple tests later, she realizes she’s pregnant with Claude’s child, so she decides to track him down and find out why he hasn’t been responding to her at all. Turns out he died the next day after meeting her, as he choked to death on an almond. Eden then decides to keep the pregnancy despite the consequences.

As all of this is happening in her life, Dawn and Marty are trying to train their kid to use the toilet, and they also can’t find the right kind of daycare for him. Eden babysits the child and shows him an R-rated movie, which then inspires the kid when their new babysitter comes in, as he mimics the demons in the movie.

Tension happens when Eden goes to her doctor’s appointment and Dawn cancels on her. Eden asks her dad, who she is estranged from, to come to the appointment instead, and they have a heart to heart after and bond. Turns out though Dawn’s conflict is her son terrorizing the new babysitter as a demon, but Eden is dismayed when she realizes Dawn was at home. Dawn is mad at Eden for it and tells her to find a doula, which kind of offends her.

As more tension increases, as Dawn is stressed out by her work and home lives, the girls decide to have a relaxing babymoon. Dawn actually sees this as a way to unwind, but Eden doesn’t, making things even more tense between them. She asks Dawn about moving in together, which Dawn doesn’t want to do, then Eden gets upset that Dawn moved so far away from her to the Upper East Side.

She feels like she’s been abandoned, but Dawn has a family of her own and tries to explain that. When she suggests Eden didn’t plan out the child enough, it creates even more problems. Things get even worse for Dawn when the trip ends and she discovers her apartment has been flooded with sewage due to a blocked pipe. Marty and her hash out their own problems and frustrations, and while Dawn is selected to go to San Francisco to be in a commercial, she discovers Eden has gone into labor while on a video call.

Eden prepares to go to the hospital in a Lyft, but then Dawn rolls up with a limo and tells her to get in. The two reconcile and go to the hospital together, where Eden gives birth to a little girl named Claudette. The movie ends with Eden, Dawn, and their kids going to see the movie Claude had been an extra in, then Dawn reveals she’s moving back to Eden’s neighborhood.

Overall Thoughts

I thought this was a decent movie, and both the lead actresses do a great job and land the comedic timing as needed for certain scenes. Was this my favorite movie? I don’t think so. It was a bit difficult to get through for me around the halfway point, as I could see exactly where this was going.

It was refreshing though to see two women being depicted in this way and having children, as we often don’t talk about postpartum depression or what it’s like to be a single mother by choice. I appreciated these depictions, although I cannot attest to whether they are accurate or not. Both of these women do seem to live fairly comfortably in New York City, which is unrealistic unless you’re rich or worked your way up.

I’m glad I watched it, not just to get it off of my Kanopy to-watch list five times, but I don’t know if I would return to this movie in the near future. Maybe if I was around their age and going through something similar? I’m not sure.

Go watch it though if it interests you! You might love it more than I did. And if you’re just reading this: movies are meant to be watched, not only read about.

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