Babes

Directed by Pamela Adlon, Babes follows two friends (Ilana Glazer’s Eden and Michelle Buteau’s Dawn) as they individually attempt to cope with pregnancy and, eventually, a newborn baby. Filmmaker Adlon, armed with a script by Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, delivers a predominantly grating comedy that strikes all the wrong notes right from the get-go, as the movie boasts (or suffers from) a perpetually underwhelming, sitcom-like atmosphere that’s echoed in its various attributes – with, especially, the hopelessly styleless visuals and ongoing reliance on eye-rolling, desperately unfunny bits of comedy exacerbating the far-from-hilarious vibe. Far more problematic, ultimately, is the decidedly less-than-compelling bent of the two central performances, as both Glazer and Buteau offer up painfully broad, nails-on-a-chalkboard efforts that makes it virtually impossible to muster up the slightest bit of interest in (or sympathy for) Eden and Dawn’s continuing exploits. (Glazer’s cartoonish and often astonishingly irritating work here remains an obvious low point within the arms-length proceedings.) And while the picture admittedly does contain a very small handful of compelling, heartfelt sequences, including a strong scene wherein Eden and Dawn open up to one another during a babymoon, Babes is, for the most part, a woeful misfire that squanders what could (and should) have been a foolproof premise.

*1/2 out of ****