Babes review: friendship and motherhood in a comedy

Babes is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s a story about two lifelong friends as they attempt to settle into adulthood, parenting, and each other’s quirks.

Babes has credentials I like. Directed by Pamela Adlon. Written by Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz. Starring Michelle Buteau and Ilana Glazer as lifetime friends. It’s funny, it’s heartfelt, it’s not very realistic but utterly real, and it’s a lot of fun.

Dawn (Michelle Buteau) and her husband Marty (Hasan Minhaj) have a four year old. Dawn’s about to have another baby. Right off the bat the story is hilarious because Dawn wants nothing more than a big meal before going into labor. She and her friend Eden (Ilana Glazer) got out to a movie and a meal with zany results.

Labor and delivery intervene. Instead of dinner, Dawn has a little girl. She is still longing for that big meal. Eden heads out of the hospital. She buys $500 worth of sushi, but the nurses won’t let her back in the room because visiting hours or over.

Eden takes her treasure chest of sushi home to Astoria on the subway. Three train changes and almost 2 hours this trip takes. She’s riding along eating sushi and strikes up a conversation with Claude (Stephan James). He lives near her (who knew) and they spend 2 hours talking and eating. Then they spend the rest of the night having unprotected sex because she’s on her period and couldn’t possibly get pregnant.

Claude disappears. By the time Eden figures out what happened to Claude she is pregnant and single. Eden hopes maybe Dawn will help out, but Dawn is so overwhelmed with babies and work and nannies who don’t stay around that she can’t deal with Eden’s issues. And they live two hours apart.

The structure of the story is a lot like a romcom, except it’s two friends not two lovers. They love each other, they fight, they make up for a happy ending.

The secondary characters in this are comedy gold. Dr. Morris (John Carroll Lynch) is one hair joke short of slapstick throughout. Oliver Platt, Sandra Bernhard, Darren Criss, and several other funny folks show up for short bits.

There’s a quote on the movie’s poster comparing Babes with Bridesmaids. There are definitely a lot of sh*t jokes in both of them.

I don’t think there’s a director anywhere in the multiverse who could have done a better job with this farce than Pamela Adlon. Kudos upon her. This funny examination of women’s lives is streaming on Hulu.