Babes (2024)

I eagerly looked forward to and we loved this profane buddy picture about best friends in New York. Eden (Ilana Glazer) is happily single and Dawn (Michelle Buteau), who is married, goes into labor with her second child in the first two minutes of the movie, before the credits. I just watched the whole labor sequence again and it's hilarious and over the top. Great support from Stephan James, Hasan Minhaj, John Carroll Lynch, Oliver Platt, and Whoopi Goldberg, just to name a few.

Director Pamela Adlon works from a snappy script by Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz (the latter plays the server in the labor sequence).

I can't locate online any tracks from the score by Jay Lifton and Ryan Miller but there are 25 songs, all of which are listed here.

James was last blogged for If Beale Street Could Talk, Lynch for The Trial of the Chicago 7, Platt for Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Goldberg for The Color Purple musical remake, and Miller (a member of the band Guster) for How It Ends.

Glazer's acting is best known to me for 76 episodes of Broad City and eight of The Afterparty and she was in Rough Night (2017), which I saw but apparently forgot to write about. Buteau, who was in Always Be My Maybe, though I didn't mention her, is a talented stand-up comedian, was a member of the ensemble in 29 episodes of the remake of The First Wives Club, and starred in (and created) all eight episodes of Survival of the Thickest. This is Minhaj's first time on these pages, despite a long resume that includes Rough Night, The Spy Who Dumped Me, No Hard Feelings, eight episodes of The Daily Show, and four of The Morning Show.

Adlon makes her feature directing debut after directing 44 episodes of her wonderful series Better Things, now available on Hulu and Disney+ with subscriptions and rentable elsewhere. Glazer's writing credits include one other feature and 63 episodes of Broad City, which she co-created. This is also Rabinowitz's feature screenwriting debut and Lifton is new to me despite many credits.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are swaddled and pacified with an 88% average and its critics are only slightly crankier at 79. When it arrived on Apple TV, the only way to see it then was to buy it, and I was so excited that I bought it within days on July 6. Now you can rent it there or from Amazon Prime. 

I'm intentionally posting this and Am I OK? the same day, as both are feminist buddy pictures--this being very New York and the other very Los Angeles.