Family is what you make it…

While Babes can’t help but pendulum us as an audience between heartfelt and hilarity at a break neck speed there’s an honesty to it that speaks to the modern age of friends, family and those awkward moments of parenting that land in-between.

Babes follow inseparable childhood best friends Eden (Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau),having grown up together in NYC, now firmly in different phases of adulthood. When carefree and single Eden decides to have a baby on her own after a one-night stand, their friendship faces its greatest challenge.  With a blend of laughter, tears, and labor pains, Babes takes us into the challenges of adulthood, friendship and finding your way through it with those people by your side.

Even as it embraces some of the rawer moments of child rearing and being pregnant, Babes in many ways is a testament to the need and necessity for everyone to have a family and support system, even if it isn’t in the strictest of biological terms.

Co-written by co-star Ilana Glazer and directed long time voice and character actor Pamela Adlon who is tackling a feature effort for the first time allows for Babes to have a self-assuredness that is rarely seen in talent that is transitioning from working on the small screen to the big one.

Glazer can’t resist to give herself a slew of zingers and one-liners throughout the film but is parred down by Adlon’s solid direction that lets us inside some more grounded and human moments of the story including the one night stand with young actor Claude (played deftly by Canada’s own Stefan James) that takes an unexpected turn.

As much as this film is designed to have us guffaw in the extremes of hilarity (for one this critic will never try Magic Mushrooms after a scene in this film) it’s all grounded in a genuine humanity that can’t be overstated based on the chemistry Glazer has with co-star Michelle Buteau.

These two actors bounce off each other effortlessly allowing the more honest gross out bits to co-exist with the genuine humanity and subsequent emotional confusion that comes out of going through the life changing experience of pregnancy and the necessity to grow up in the wake of it.

With some fantastic supporting players that include the likes of Hasan Minhaj, John Carroll Lynch, Sandra Bernhard and Oliver Platt rounding out the ensemble, Adlon does a wonderful job at letting her actors cook while still keeping the emotional message on the train tracks.  This film certainly makes me hope that Pamela Adlon will get the opportunity to direct more features because Babes unquestionably shows she’s got the chops for it

Babes comes down to the realities of life, that are often gross (yes most women do poop during child birth, deal with it), occasionally emotional but always unavoidable because life changes for better and for worse, but if you’ve got the right people beside you to help out, it’ll probably all be OK.