‘Babies’ Review: Anna Kendrick and Seth Rogen Debate Parenthood in Lauren Miller Rogen’s Warm, Wise Comedy

4 hours ago 7

Thirty-something Angelenos Annie (Anna Kendrick) and Aaron (Seth Rogen) have been together for seventeen years. They’re happy and childfree. However, it seems they’re the only so-called “late bloomers” in their friend circle.

We first meet the couple at a 4th of July party that seems to have more kids in attendance than adults. As her camera pans past the vibrant celebration, “Babies” writer/director Lauren Miller Rogen plunges us directly into Annie’s inner monologue, working through her complicated feelings about children and parenthood with her charmingly prickly humor.

The party could practically be a midcentury post-card with its air of plastic perfection. D.P. Edu Grau’s warm cinematography perfectly captures the mythical, magic light of Los Angeles on a summer day. There are happy children playing, people imbibing cool drinks, and hot dogs on the grill. Yet Annie’s monologue cuts through the sheen, pointing out the fissures in the pretty picture.

'Mighty Mary' sailor, Lisa Charles McDonald, up the mast, on location in Oyster Bay.

The boys being mean to girls. The adults having vapid conversations about farmer’s markets. A realist who sometimes straddles the line into caustic, Annie is always lost in her thoughts. “Do I think about it all the time because I’m talking myself into it or talking myself out of it?,” she asks herself as she ponders her newfound preoccupation with whether or not she wants to have kids. When she directly asks Aaron what he thinks on their way home from the party, he says it’ll affect her more than it would affect him, so he’ll follow her lead.

Later that night, when their close friend Eliza (Kate Berlant, always funny) shows up on their doorstep with her child declaring she’s leaving her husband Luke (Dan Stevens), Annie and Aaron are given a chance to see what it’s like to live with a kid up close and personal (spoiler: a lot of poop is involved.)

At first, this big change in their routine means smoking weed only in their bedroom with the window open, giving Annie’s dad (David Strathairn, in a rare comedic role) the chance to “play Grandpa,” and a front row seat into a marriage imploding. As the months go by with Annie and Aaron and Eliza and her child living as a “blended” family, they both get a glimpse at what the other might be like as a parent; the tenderness, the awkwardness, and everything in between.

At the same time, while Annie pursues her dream of opening her own gallery with her very pregnant friend Becky (Issa Rae), she sees up close how women are often tasked with choosing between spending time with their children and pursuing their dreams. Becky has two older kids, including an angsty teen who gives her mom the cold shoulder until she needs help with a menstrual period-related accident. Annie and Becky have known each other for decades, so much of their communication is found it what remains unsaid.

Although the film is a rich ensemble, the characters largely orbit around their relationships with Annie and Aaron, and Kendrick and Rogen are a perfect fit of wry humor and witty one-liners. Their on-screen personas meld perfectly, giving them the kind of lived-in ratatat patter you’d expect from a happily married couple who also happen to be each other’s best friends. Along with their witticisms, the film’s humor is never mean. The various parents and children that come in and out of Annie and Aaron’s lives are never the butt of the film’s jokes, rather they’re often actually in on their own.

In one standout scene, a drunken Annie goes on a comical tirade at Becky’s baby shower, fed up with the other women who think her life is less complete because she isn’t a mother. While she’s certainly emboldened by alcohol, she is not mean. She’s just asking the hard questions out loud: how do you bring a child into a world that’s dying? Why do some women become mothers without doing research into all the ways your body will change afterwards? Why do people not think about how a child will cause the structure of their marriage to shift?

Even before we get to this sequence, it’s pretty obvious that while Annie is good with kids and has what it takes to be a parent, her passion will always be firmly anchored in her work and her dream of opening her own gallery someday. Just as it’s clear that Becky, who we learn is a highly accomplished artist in her own right, is committed to her family first, and her work second. Both choices are valid. The film never elevates one over the other.

Instead, the magic of the film lies in the way it walks everyone else, and of course any audience member who also thinks women having kids is the only “normal” way to be, elegantly through just how deeply someone like Annie has actually considered what having a child would mean for her. In a sense, then, this is a message picture, but not one that ever feels overly didactic.

Early in the film, Annie asks her father what he thinks her mother, who is incapacitated due to dementia, would say about her dilemma, and he just says, “She’d want you to do what would make you the most happy.” It’s a simple message, one that applies to any choice a person makes in terms of their personal family planning. So stop asking!