Obvious Child is an indie female-driven abortion rom-com with honesty but not many laughs

One of the things smaller movies have is a luxury of targets and protagonists. They can focus on the lives of individuals that don’t matter to the entire world or just cover a few weeks of time. Without having to be concerned with enormous profits, these movies can have a real singular vision and point of view that doesn’t compromise. They can also cover theoretically controversial topics like abortion, which is so taboo in movies it was made a punchline in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, there’s also the controversial point-of-view of a woman, which is considered restrictive and only for wide appeal romantic comedies. The dream is to have something like Bridesmaids which is clever and funny enough to appeal across the board, but sometimes instead you get 27 Dresses. No offense to those that like that terrible movie.

Obvious Child is a small movie starring Jenny Slate as aspiring NYC stand-up comedian Donna Stern in one of those classic indie “a few weeks in the life” sorts of films. Donna is a twenty-something Jewish girl with some mom issues, and she’s not afraid to bring sheer, harsh, uncomfortable honesty into her act. She’s got some talent, even if she’s not getting paid yet. But a bunch of things go wrong all at once when she gets dumped by her boyfriend and then loses her job, causing her to have a terrible set and have a drunken hookup with pleasant faced Max (Jake Lacy). Soon she discovers she is (shocker!) pregnant and decides to have a procedure to terminate the pregnancy. So she has to decide how to deal with Max, should she tell him about it? What about her friends and family and job? What is the right thing to do for herself and her future?

One thing I will say about this movie is that is mostly not dull, but I didn’t really find it that funny, which is problematic considering there are several stand-up routines shown. Jenny Slate is a talented comedic performer as seen lately on Parks and Recreation, but I didn’t much care for her material. Not because it made me uncomfortable, but because it seemed kind of cliched “overly descriptive” material and not that innovative. I actually found the short little bits done by Gabe Liebman (Jenny Slate’s real life comedic collaborator) much funnier and snappier, and then there was the critical movie flaw: I just didn’t care about the characters. Sure, it was nice to see Gaby Hoffman (playing Donna’s best friend) in a low key role where she wasn’t yet another crazy person, so good on her. And I suppose it’s okay to see Jake Lacy, the least interesting actor from The Office, but hey … he’s tall!

There was an extended scene that wasted David Cross, but hey, so did those Chipmunks movies, so I can’t be that mad. I guess it’s “progressive” to just have a female protagonist be okay with having a abortion, and I suppose that’s true, but I can’t shake the feeling that the movie is trying to be too clever about it. That said, it’s nice to see the topic approached in an honest and genuine way, and there are some dramatic moments here that work quite well. There were one or two little absurdist moments I enjoyed and would’ve loved to see more of, but instead there were just a few too many twee dance sequences set to hipster music. Eh, I can’t be mad at this movie, it was fine. I just didn’t buy the romance, and Donna wasn’t funny enough for me to be invested in her career.

Still, it’s not a bad thing to have an approach that tries something unlike the typical summer movie, which I believe has been already proven by the success of The Fault in Our Stars. The pieces were all there to make a very charming, heartwarming alternative take on romance here, but sorry to say … it didn’t quite work.