Review by Susanne Nielsen
Pamela Adlon directs the new comedy Babes – Two New York friends, Eden and Dawn have always promised to stick together through thick and thin, and one of them, Eden, after a romantic evening with a handsome man (Stephan James), discovers that she is pregnant. What do you do when you run a yoga studio in Astoria and the handsome man has unfortunately disappeared?
Not everyone is ready for this, not her best friend Dawn (Michelle Buteau) and especially not her dad (played for a few great moments by Oliver Platt) – “I’d be happy to meet your kid someday”, he says. So she soldiers on and we believe her, from loving food to extra emotions, in her case maybe not what you would expect.

Of course she wants her best childhood friend to accompany her on this new adventure, even if Dawn has been through it all, and now is literally consumed by her family, the second child and the job she really wanted to get back to. She is a dentist with an adoring husband (Hasan Minhaj), and two adorable, demanding little kids, and a now ever progressive needy mommy-to-be. If breast-feeding is one’s only all-consuming concern, the home is happy, it is time to own up to that childhood promise to share everything, including what Dawn already knows, that this is not going to be easy.
The film is smart, loud and cheeky, but such a comedy is urgently needed, who hasn’t experienced something like that? Ilana Glazer wrote Babes together with her colleague Josh Rabinowitz, and is its leading actress.

The friend duo, Eden and Dawn, Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau, are wonderful in it and play off each other perfectly. A real women’s film, guys invited, for sure! Be prepared to hear and ( almost) see everything you always wanted to know from conception to cutting the umbilical cord, it is all said out loud. Motherhood as comedy, we could use more of that! Great fun through the New York scene, Nora Ephron would be proud!
Additional Film Information:
Cast: Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau
Directed by: Pamela Adion
Genre: Comedy
MPAA Rating: R for sexual material, language throughout, and some drug use.
Running Time: 1 hr. 44 min.
Opening Date: Now Playing
Released in: Theaters