Movie Review: 'Babes' Starring Ilana Glazer

Babes (2024)

Directed by Pamela Adlon

Written by Ilana Glazer, Josh Rabinowitz

Starring Ilana Glazer, Michele Buteau, Hasan Minhaj, John Carroll Lynch

Release Date May 17th, 2024

Published May 28th, 2024

Babes stars Ilana Glazer as Eden and Michele Buteau as Dawn. Best friends since forever, the two are so close that their share photos of their bowel movements. You know you're close when a significant bowel movement is a subject of your text chats, am I right? No, no one does that? Awkward. Well, Eden and Dawn do that and the dialogue that introduces the concept goes a long way to setting up the bond of friendship that will be tested by the story about to unfold.

The friendship of Eden and Dawn is tested on multiple fronts. First, Dawn is having her second baby. It's Thanksgiving and she and Eden are at the movies when Dawn's water breaks. A rush to the hospital and some very gross, and quite funny jokes about the process of giving birth, leads to Dawn having a healthy baby. This will further tax the time she gets to spend with her closest friend, Eden, who has no children or family to occupy her time.

That will change soon however as the same day that Dawn has her baby, Eden meets Claude (Stephen James). An actor, Claude is handsome and sweet and he and Eden have a ludicrious amount in common, including a shared love of the video game Street Fighter. The two spend the night together eating copious amounts of expensive Chinese food and making love without a condom. Eden is of the naive belief that she can't get pregnant while she's on her period. If the implications of that detail bother you, Babes may not be for you.

Yes, Eden gets pregnant and Claude disappears without a trace. Eden makes the outlandish decision to have her baby and become a single mom. It's ludicrous because nothing about Eden says she's prepared to be single mom. Luckily for Eden, she has a best friend with the experience of two children. Naturally, Eden assumes that her best friend will help her but, to Eden's surprise and disappointment, Dawn's not interested. Between two kids, a husband played by Hasan Minhaj, and her desire to return to her dental practice, Dawn isn't eager to take on any part of Eden's decision to become a single mom.

And that's the conflict of Babes. How will two best friends overcome these obstacles to remain best friends? That's a unique conflict that I have certainly not seen tackled in the form of a movie before. That alone makes Babes a unique and intriguing movie. That the film is also quite funny, raunchy, and a little weird, is icing on the cake. Director Pamela Adlon has a strong sence of pacing and she provides plenty of room for her delightful stars, Ilana Glazer and Michele Buteau to create the comedy in any given scene.

I've been a fan of Ilana Glazer since her break out Comedy Central series, Broad City, but I realize that Glazer is an acquired taste. Glazer has a love of the scatological and shocking. She's frank to a degree that turns off many, many people. If you don't find her kind of obnoxious, in your face, raunchy comedy, stay far away from Babes as this movie is directly from her style of comedy. Glazer co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Rabinowitz and she riffed jokes on set as well. If you like your humor a little gross, a little raw, and liberally sprinkled with obscenities, then I recommend Babes for you.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and more than 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, you can subscribe to my writing on Vocal. If you'd like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one time tip. Thanks!