Alex Russell

In our rarely-running kinda-series Should You See It? we talk about movies that just came out. You can figure out the rest of the premise from the title of the series. That’s right: we talk recipes. Should you see Jenny Slate’s romantic comedy Obvious Child?

One of the weirdest parts of pop culture now is that if you really love something, it starts to feel like it’s one of the biggest things in the world even when it isn’t. You can follow a hashtag or go down a Tumblr or YouTube hole and suddenly that one Comedy Central show you really, really like feels like it just must be something everyone you know is all about.

Obvious Child inundated my digital life last week. It’s a movie that did well enough at Sundance earlier this year to earn a bigger release this month. Jenny Slate (Kroll Show, Parks and Recreation, Bob’s Burgers) did a sort of “comedy nerd” press junket to promote it on a lot of podcasts, but it’s entirely possible you haven’t heard much about it.

Jenny Slate plays a stand up comic who gets dumped after being too open on stage about her relationship. She’s in that mid-20s period where people have to make decisions about how to stop taking money from their parents, how to have a stable relationship and still be their own person, and how to get and keep a job that doesn’t suck. It’s a relatable premise.

Then, well, let’s get this out of the way: even though the director has said it’s not “an abortion comedy,” it is definitely a film that deals with abortion. Jenny Slate’s character has a one-night stand and decides to have an abortion. That’s not giving anything away; it’s the hook of the whole experience.

Questions come up. How do you have a conversation about this with someone you don’t know? How do you tell your parents? How do you tell your friends? How do you tell a group of strangers that you talk to with a microphone?

Obvious Child will rub people different ways based on their feelings about abortion, but it may also have the same effect based on how people feel about relationships in general. Jenny Slate’s character is funny and goofy, but she’s also “independent” even though that word has lost some specific meaning in some ways. The portrayal of her decision to have an abortion is absolute; she asks a friend if the experience hurts or not, but it’s clearly not part of the decision. This is not a movie that wants to tell you if you should have an abortion or not, but Jenny Slate’s character is a look into what the process looks like for someone who has their mind made up.

Should You See It? 

Well, someone sure should. Obvious Child made $133,000 this weekend in 18 theaters. It’s still in limited release (Frozen is still in more theaters than that in week 30 of release and The LEGO Movie is in over 15 times that many in week 20) but you should try to see it if you can. It’s an extremely refreshing romantic comedy both in subject matter and in characterization; these are real people who meet because they get a little drunk and flirt with each other. Every movie should try to show an interesting version of an emotion you understand or feel on some level, and the weight of an important decision when life is already weighing very heavily is spot damn on for that.

Obvious Child is in limited release until June 27, when it is released everywhere. See the trailer here.

Image source: Sundance