When I think about what the funniest comedy of the year is, if I set apart Deadpool and wolverine for not technically being just a comedy, then Babes has the shot at being the best comedy of the year. There’s really no doubt in the how r why. Director Pamela Adlon had so much to say in her FX series Better Things that the idea that she would step behind the camera and have even more to say, seems like a no-brainer. Still, she has to rely on Ilana Glazer and Michelle Bhutto to do the heavy lifting. Luckily these two ladies have been looking for material like this, outside their own shows, and Babes is packed with heart, relatable moments, and raunchy comedy.
Glazer and Bhutto play two best friends who are so close they consider themselves sisters. Their closeness can only be disrupted by the forward motion, in that one of them starts maturing past the other one. Dawn (Bhuto) has a husband, and at the top of the film, she’s about to have a baby. For a while, this allows Eden (Glazer) to remain in and around her increasingly busy life, mainly because she has no life of her own. But, when Eden meets a charming man, and their relationship moves to the next level, it looks like she’s about to experience motherhood too. This is something Dawn is positive her best friend cannot handle, which drives a wedge in their relationship. Will these Babes be able to mend their friendship?
Adlon really structures the kind of low-key comedy I used to love just finding each year. This is the For A Good Time Call, or Bachelorette, of its year. It has all the easy marketability of its ensemble cast, which also includes stalwarts like Oliver Platt, Sandra Bernhardt, John Carroll Lynch, Hasan Minaj, Stefan James, Darren Criss, and Whoopi Goldberg as the voice of breasts. No, that isn’t a joke. Whoopi has had such a wide career of opportunities, and I bet even she didn’t see the day coming when someone would ask her “would you voice these breasts for us?
It is a crude, hilarious romp, and one of those few films each year that makes me laugh out loud. I feel like I enjoy a lot of comedies, I smile, maybe I chuckle. but finding a joke that can make me laugh out loud, seems rare. Is it the lack of the visual context? Is it just my changing age and relativity to the humor coming from a different generation? I don’t know. But Babes got real world laughs. Just like its director, it is smart as hell. And Adlon knows how to bring out the absolute funniest, most relatable moment in every scene.
I also didn’t hate the audio description, which also has to dance with the raunchy humor as well. The description of these jokes was quite successful. I noticed the AD team went with a male narrator, which at first glance seems odd, but the flip side of that is that this movie has a lot of female energy in the dialog. So, the contrast works well. It isn’t a feminist work of staggering equity, so I’m not thinking a guy here is completely off base. Plus, he also felt like he knew he was narrating a comedy. Tone is so important.
Strap in, because Babes is awesome. I actually bought this on VOD some weeks back, and now it’s on Hulu with audio description. So you have many ways to consume this movie.
Final Grade: A
