The main reason people seem to be talking about Obvious Child is its subject matter. It’s something of a romantic comedy, and it pretty closely resembles one of those indie movies where a directionless 20-something stumbles through their life trying to find meaning, but it comes loaded with the hook that the majority of its conflict comes from an abortion. Slate’s character, a somewhat air-headed standup comedian named Donna, meets a strange guy (Jake Lacy) in a bar, sleeps with him while in a drunken stupor, and then has to decide whether or not she’s ready to be a mother once she realizes that they forgot to actually use the condom they had with them, resulting in a pregnancy. Turns out she’s not ready to be a mother, at all, so she decides to go through with the abortion. Obvious Child is mostly the story of her following through with this decision. It’s an unflinching and unapologetic depiction of what it’s like to be one of the many young women who get put in this situation every day. It’s a bit sad, it’s often darkly funny, and because it’s so honest and nonjudgmental in its portrayal of the Donna character, it’s gotten a lot of people’s attention.
The main reason audiences will be glad they gave into the buzz and watched Obvious Child is that Slate is really funny, in a really real and open way, and the script she’s working with is strong enough to make sure that the audience is always entertained, even when confronted with subject matter that most people don’t like to spend too much time thinking about. The off-the-cuff quips that make up the bulk of the film’s humor feel like the sort of things that were improvised on set, the sorts of turns of phrase that come straight out of Slate’s stage stuff, which makes the movie feel like time spent hanging out with a funny friend rather than a drama hammer ready to hit you over the head with its messages, or whatever. Whoever is responsible for the laughs, screenwriters, or performer, or a mixture of both, it’s pleasant to have them, and it makes a movie about abortion not really feel like what you would imagine a movie about abortion would feel like.
Lacy is also really good as the sort-of love interest. The script is smart enough to know that this isn’t a story about a boy and a girl, so you don’t get too much of his character’s pursuit of Donna, but it is important that he appear to be enough of a good guy that it adds an element of uncertainty and struggle over her decision of what to do about her knocked-up status, and Lacy is naturally really likable and relatable. His character is a real goober—the kind of dopey white guy who is all preppy clothes and “aw shucks” body language—but instead of feeling like the caricature he was probably drawn as on the page, Lacy’s performance is able to imbue him with enough humanity and enough agency of his own that you buy him as being a real human being and not just a plot point in the drama that is Donna’s life.
The only real problem with the film is that, despite its challenging subject matter, it still strictly adheres to the structure of a rote, predictable romantic comedy. You’ve got the sequence where the couple comes together, the sequence where difficulties separate them for a period of time, and then the crisis point where they’re finally brought back together, all while the audience cheers/weeps. The standard shit is all here, and it’s happening in the standard order, it’s just done with a pregnancy termination looming in the background. A little deviation from formula would have been nice. Heck, this movie even includes the beyond clichéd trope of the romantic comedy heroine having a “gay best friend” (Gabe Liedman), who is there to dispense sassy wisdom to his female cohort whenever she’s feeling down about boys—and there’s so little attempt at putting any spin on the worn out old character, or to make him resonate as being a real human being, that you kind of just feel bad for Liedman. Obvious Child is a funny enough diversion, and it proves that Slate has the chops to be a leading lady, but don’t go into it expecting much more.
