Movie Review: Obvious Child [SPOLIERS]

This past weekend, Redbox was quite a friend to me. I rented several movies, so my next few blog posts will be about them.

Picture from imdb.com

My sister and I rented Obvious Child, a movie I might call an Indie Rom-Com. This movie is about a young, Jewish comedienne (played by Jenny Slate) who lacks a sense of direction and maturity in her life. She completely falls apart when her boyfriend breaks up with her, and in response has a one night stand with a [albeit very nice] stranger (played by Jake Lacy). She realizes this sexual interlude has left her pregnant. She already knows she wants to have an abortion, but spends the latter half of the film trying to figure out a good way to tell this stranger that she is pregnant with his child before she has the procedure.

The rom-com half of my description obviously is the girl-meets-boy part and their awkwardly hilarious yet endearing "relationship." The indie part is the abortion twist, in that this movie is not about the female protagonist's conflict about whether to keep the baby or not. That decision is immediately made in a very matter-of-fact, practical way, which I think leads to a feminist thread in the movie. The focus is also not upon how this abortion will change this woman's life forever, but is rather portrayed as just an event that happens in her life (and in the lives of many other women as well).

I thought this movie was very well cast. Slate is completely convincing in her role, and you want to be her friend and hope everything works out in the end even though she is, personally, a mess. And Lacy does a great job of playing the "nice guy" who you're rooting for (even though you're wondering why he didn't call her back for a second date sooner). The chemistry between the two is very sweet, with her falling for him because of how nice he is, and him being nice not just to impress her or sleep with her again but because he genuinely is a good guy. The movie has a happy ending with these two, which of course makes me love a film even more.

If this movie ends up in the Walmart $5 movie bin, I will buy it. This means I think this movie was worth watching more than once and not that I think it's only worth $5. I just don't pay more than that for a DVD.